


No Grave

by mynameisraj



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Compliant, F/M, Fan Apprentice - Freeform, Love Confessions, Making Out, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, Pining, anais mitchell and hozier were on full blast the entire time i was writing this so that's the vibe, anyway on with the show, basically i have this oc and i love her very much, beating the dog shit out of valdemar, but also not at all, i hop around between the events of the game and before, i love en dashes, i wrote this for me but you can read it if you want, my horniness is tasteful but my pining is messy af, not beta read even by me, possibly smut later?, srsly naomi loves julian and i love her, the death is the apprentice which obviously resolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 08:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23847853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mynameisraj/pseuds/mynameisraj
Summary: “I’d dreamed of you. Wrapped in linen and covered in starstrand. When I… when I made my deal with the Hanged Man, I wanted to give up only the memory of finding you…of finding you, after you caught the plague, after I came back from Lucio’s wing. Of burying you. But I knew that if I kept only the good memories I would return to Vesuvia, and would only meet with disappointment. Besides I didn’t think I deserved even the happiness of remembering you.”-Naomi came to Vesuvia on a hope and a prayer and a prophecy she half-understands. She meets our favorite pointy-elbowed doctor while everything they both hope for becomes more and more impossible; after she returns from the dead, they fight to come home to each other. You've played the Arcana you know what's uptl;dr, my fan apprentice, an emotionally repressed, vertically challenged virgo and her birdman bf wade knee-deep through tooth-rotting fluff and a laundry list of tropes that own my uwus
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak, Asra/Muriel (The Arcana), Julian Devorak/Original Female Character(s), Portia Devorak/Nadia
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	1. Underworlds

They took her application without much argument. She doubts they’ll even read it; she’s willing to work there at all, which is not something that can be said for most of Vesuvia. Asra thinks she has a death wish. They’d never fought before a few days ago, a shouting match while he packed to leave for one of his trips. 

“You have so much potential! And you’re going to throw it away scrubbing floors and feeding leeches!”

“What would you have me do, ah? Sit idly by, delivering babies and decocting potions while the city suffers? Go back to Udah?”

“Yes! You’re, you’re the best witch I’ve ever met, you’re only eighteen, and you’re throwing it away on one interpretation of a dream!”

“This is where people are suffering the most! People recover from it on the Steppe, the Gate Pass traders almost never have it, but here!”

He threw an armful of scarves into his bag. Faust was hiding somewhere in his bedroll. 

“You could come with me. You  _ should  _ come with me. We can find a cure together.”

“Just because you’re my best friend doesn’t mean you own me, Asra,” she said coldly. “This is cowardice. I have nothing to say to you.” 

She stormed out of the building and handed in her application that evening. She still can’t think about, the hot ember of her anger at Asra for running away burning in her belly. She felt it through the earth when he walked out of the west gate, looking for answers she knew he wouldn’t find. 

Two thousand people have died of the plague in the last year. The palace doctors have been working tirelessly, but they’re overwhelmed. Ten years since the plague came to Vesuvia, and in all that time they’ve only accepted people with medical apprenticeships to work in the dungeons, nevermind that she worked with her mother as their tribe’s healer for fifteen years. But it’s getting worse. Two days ago notices appeared on every message board around the city that the doctors needed hands, any hands. It didn’t surprise her when a courier came to the shop after she put in her application, notifying her that she was to report to the palace at dawn the next day. 

When she comes to the gate and presents the letter, the stocky guard gives her a pitying look. If it’s danger he’s worried about, she knows what she’s getting into, at least. Sometimes victims who don’t want to go to the palace come to her shop. If she doesn’t turn them away, it’s only because she knows the palace will be of no more help. In Vesuvia, no one survives the plague. It’s all she can do to ease their passing. 

The stairway from the outside gets damper and mustier the lower she goes. It’s four flights before she reaches the iron doors. There’s no sound from inside, no noise, no wind. She clangs the iron knocker. 

The door creaks open, and behind it is a soupy-eyed woman with her mask around her neck.

“You’re one of the new blood. Well, come in. Don’t let me stop you. Sit on the bench over there.”

The light is scarlet red. There are no lamps, and it seems to come from everywhere, from the workbenches and crumbling bricks, from the puddles of brackish water in the corners of the room, from the racks of dirty aprons. Four or five doctors in white and black uniforms talk quietly in a corner, and a dozen victims sit waiting by the wall, their eyes empty. She’s seen the look a hundred times before: they’re waiting to die. An old woman studies her reflection in a puddle as if looking for her sclera to redden all of a sudden. 

Three years ago, Naomi har Eema’s mother had a dream. Though her magic was weak, she dreamt of the future, the silver dreams, the moon dreams. Naomi’s grandmother had been a water witch. When they grazed the herds in the summer highlands, they never feared dry rivers or vanished springs; her grandmother could smell the way to water through red canyons and barren tablelands where the wind was hot and smelled of burning sand. She could trace a spring by the bend of the reeds and the path of the sparrows. Like Naomi, she was always noticing things no one else did, always seeing the rabbits twitching their ears in the grass. She saw what she was looking at instead of what she thought she wanted to see, and that was what made a witch.

In her mother’s dream, Nomi had walked east, leading an ewe, and behind her, the rangeland vanished. She walked into a city where the river was red as blood; when she waded in, the river turned glass-clear, but all that remained of her were ripples washing against the sand and stone . A black dove and a white raven perched on the branch of a willow tree. 

“We have all heard tales of the terrible Red Plague,” said her mother to the rest of her family the next morning. “And I know now it will not end until Naomi ends it. She must go east, to Vesuvia.”

“She’s fifteen!” her father exclaimed. Her brothers and sisters nodded sternly. “Surely you must be mistaken.”

“I know what I saw,” said her mother, and a week later, on the full moon, her mother gifted her with the best ewe in the flock as a gift for whoever would take her in Vesuvia. She walked for two months. When she arrived, bruised and road-sore, someone waited behind the guard who let her in. 

“I pulled the Fool this morning,” said the white-haired person, grinning behind their violet scarf. “The Page of Wands. And the Knight of Cups.” His lips curved, as if he knew a pleasant secret. “I’m Asra, the magician.” 

Asra didn’t want her sheep, so she brought it to the palace gates as a gift for the Countess. It would be better off in someone’s stomach than in a sheepfold; it was a top-notch specimen physically but had a bottom-drawer personality, and Naomi was happy to be rid of it. 

The timing of life was not always the timing of dreams. It’s been three years since she came to Vesuvia, and the plague has only worsened. Asra is always at the Coliseum or gone. The Count throws lavish feasts and parties, and in Vesuvia, the canals run red. 

A group of other new hires are sitting on a bench against the wall. None of them speak, which suits Naomi just fine. She looks at the cobwebs on the ceiling, the uneven floor, the ink stains on the desks. The doctors are now consulting a drawing, but she can’t make out what it is. They don’t have time to clean, clearly. And they’re not making progress. One of the patients cups his hands around his mouth and coughs wetly. His palms come away dark with blood.

“Well,” simpers a voice. “Why don’t we get this over with, hmm.” 

A person wearing a pointed wimple minces over to the bench of new hires. Their long fingers are clothed in black gloves. 

“I am Quaestor Valdemar, but I assure you, the nobility is simply a title.” They tilt their head at an eerie angle. “I am chief of, ahem, research. Wouldn’t you all like a tour?”

The group of them rises uncertainly to their feet. Naomi clutches her staff. She carries it everywhere, useful for navigating crowds, climbing stairs, self-defense, and the mild theatre of witchery. Valdemar looks at her in bored distaste which quickens into masked interest. She meets their scarlet eyes until they turn away. 

“This is the receiving room, where the subjects, I mean patients, come in for treatment. Come this way, it’s much more interesting in the back…”

They walk down a wide, low-ceilinged corridor, where doctors walk to and fro, faces pinched in worry. A few give them tight smiles. 

“You needn’t worry about these,” says Valdemar, gesturing to a set of iron doors, barred and padlocked shut. “Cold storage, offices, ah, yes, here’s the sickroom, at least, for the ones who still remember their names…”

It’s a long hall of iron beds and white-faced people with red eyes. Some of the others gasp and cover their mouths. Naomi’s been treating the plague since she was fifteen. If she sank all the way into her sorrow every time it would eat her whole. 

“Yes, the hospice is through that door, and the morgue is through the door after that, really quite an efficient system, you see.” Valdemar breezes back down the corridor, which opens up into a wide room, where a white operating table sits on a raised stage amidst circles of desks. “The observation room.” She hears skittering but can’t place where it’s coming from. “And the offices, all along these walls here, the others sleep in them, keeps them closer to their work. Down that hallway are the operating theaters, as you can tell from the noise.”

Someone screams. It isn’t the dying whimper of a plague victim, nor the hoarse yell of a woman in labor, a scream of pain, and the sound of a bonesaw. 

“What’s happening?”

“Poppy shortage. But the show must go on.” Valdemar waves her off. She lingers, listening with winces to the screams and howls of pain through the doors of the operating theatre, wondering what she might do, if anything, if it would be worth it. 

“Sit.” Valdemar flicks their hand at the desks surrounding the observation stage. “Someone will be by with jobs for you.”

They fold their hands and glide down the main corridor. 

After another thirty seconds of listening to the screaming Naomi hops off the desk and marches down the corridor, intent on waiting no longer. The same bleary-eyed woman who opens the door gives her an apron, a pair of black leather gloves, and a mop. 

“Buy boots,” she advises as Naomi stands on tiptoe to fetch a bucket from a high shelf. “Or take a pair from the doctors’ closets. Don’t get your feet in whatever’s on these floors.” 

Naomi nods her thanks and sets to work clearing the puddles up. She tries to even out the floor with magic, but the second she sends her awareness into the stone she recoils as if slapped. The things in this stone are hellish. She’ll settle for mopping puddles. 

Normally standing water smells green, like tadpoles and sediment, but this is tinny, coppery, like rust and poison. Once her grandmother used her magic to clean a well poisoned by feuding clans. That had been poisoned by sheep carcasses; this was something else. 

“Excuse me, miss,” said a dry voice. “Do you know when someone will be out to see us?”

A reedy man with a trembling chin and pink eyes looked down at her from the waiting benches. 

“I don’t,” she said softly. “Would you like some water? Or something for the pain?”

“Oh, miss, you needn’t be so kind _ – _ ”

“Here.” She takes her waterskin off of her belt. “It’s clean. Don’t worry.”

He slurps greedily, slapping the skin to get the last drops out. A rivulet runs down his chin. 

“What’s the use of a debt owed to you by a ghost?”

“I don’t see a ghost.” 

He laughs hollowly, gums unnaturally red. “Before I came here, I went in to be measured for a coffin. I only want to die well.” 

“I’ll make sure they take care of you.”

He doesn’t answer, just returns to looking at his lap. 

Half an hour later, she has the first room mostly dry and is up on a stepladder, clearing cobwebs with her staff. They didn’t have a feather duster, which is ridiculous because the inflammation affects the lungs first and dust is hardly helping them. She wipes off the tip with her apron and reaches into a corner, the ladder teetering. 

Something barks, claws clatter on the floor, and a brown blur barrels into her step ladder. 

“Devorak!” Someone snaps. The ladder tilts, she’s weightless for a moment, and then she lands on top of a very bony person, slamming her knee painfully against the floor. 

“I’m going to feed that thing to the beetles,” someone else announces. A dog’s slobbery tongue licks at her face. 

“Come on, Kasterboros,” groans the person whose hip bones are currently digging into her stomach. “Don’t be bitter just because her charms outnumber yours.”

Naomi scrambles to her knees. Face-down and spread-eagled under her is a black doctor’s uniform and a shock of auburn hair. A flopsy, sweet-faced hound dog is snuffling at the herb sachets in her belt. 

“Terribly sorry about that,” says the man, dragging himself to his hands and knees. 

“Are you alright?” She asks. He turns over and deposits himself into a seated position. He’s split his chin. 

“Oh, golden. This is Brundle.”

“Yes, you’re a very good girl,” says Naomi to the dog, whose tongue is about a foot out of her mouth. “Here.” She digs into one of her sachets for a bit of comfrey. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“It’s not,” says one of the other doctors, glaring disapprovingly at the other. “I take it you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Doctor 069.” 

Nomi leans forward between his gangly legs, cupping a bit of magic in her hand with the comfrey poultice. “Tip your head up a bit.” 

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing your cut.”

She touches her palm to the cool of his skin. He hisses at the contact. 

“You must be new. This isn’t how we approach lacerations and I’m fine, really _ – _ ”

When she pulls her hand away the leaves are gone and the skin on his chin is unbroken. His eyes widen. He touches his face in wonder. 

“How did you _ –  _ what _ – _ ”

“I’m a witch.”

“Ah.” He looks suspicious for a moment, but then Brundle is licking his cheek and his expression melts into delight. “Yes, hello, you’re a very good girl, aren’t you, yes, and no one is ever going to feed you to the beetles _ – ah, that tickles, Brundle–”  _ He scratches her wrinkly skin. “Well, thank you for the fix, and sorry about knocking you over, but I have triage to work on.” He rises to his feet and straightens his black and red cape. 

“Do you have a name?” She picks up her staff and her basket of cleaning rags. 

“Call me Julian. You?”

“Naomi.”

“Ah, I’ve heard of you. You know Asra, then.”

“Well enough.”

“And you’re one of the new hires to keep this place running. Well.” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Keep your head down, and pray the cure is worth it, in the end.”

He walks off toward the waiting patients, Brundle trotting at his heels. 

_ How many underworlds are under this one?  _ _ How deep does it go, I wonder, and how deep will we have to dig, will I have to dig, to find the river?  _


	2. I'm Orpheus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the overhall of this fic
> 
> basically I'm gonna jump between prequel and canon until the end when I'm going to fuck about on my merry way and do whatever I want
> 
> also contains a fair deal of screwing over canon
> 
> i'm on tumblr @hermionepunchesnazis

The door swings shut behind the Countess. Before it closes, Nomi glimpses her sidestepping a puddle, violet slipper reflected in the murky water. If they traded places they’d be just like each other. They’re both steel-backed, both reserved, though Nomi can only begin to imagine what hides behind the Countess’ facade. She even has prophetic dreams. She’d make a good sorceress. Naomi rifles through the tea jars. 

What has Asra mentioned about the Count’s death? He doesn’t like to talk about that night, and she doesn’t remember anything. The gossip-mongers say that Doctor Devorak was a fierce alchemist who put Zadithi fire in the Count’s wine. The gentry say he was a bitter employee who threw a burning lamp at his boss. Nadia asked her to find him, not find who did it, so either she thinks him guilty or wants him to mollify the people and doesn’t care either way. 

Somehow Naomi doesn’t doubt that she’ll find him. It’s what she’ll do when she does that she’s worried about. She prods at the fire and flips the tap up on their water bucket, filling the kettle to the brim. 

Something bangs in their back room. At first she thinks it’s another of Asra’s street cats, but the human cursing says otherwise. The voice is too deep to be Asra’s. Silently she picks up her staff. Only fools and masochists break into magicians’ shops. 

“Erm, behind you.”

She wheels around with her staff and cracks the stranger across the knees of the tallest boots she’s ever seen. He topples into a stack of books and makes a sound like a parrot shoved into a bagpipe. 

“Agh,” he grunts. “You must be the witch’s apprentice.” He straightens a red-eyed plague doctor’s mask. It couldn’t be, she’s never been that lucky, but maybe–

“I’m the witch.”

She lunges. 

“En garde!” With a flourish he pulls off his cape and throws it in her face. It smells like beer so cheap you could make money taking dares to drink it. He wrenches the staff from her hands. 

“I’ve seen magic tricks before. You can’t surprise–”

She grabs a jar of cinnamon from the shelf and launches it at his head. It shatters against the mask’s beak and knocks it askew, clattering against the floor. He sneezes; a line of blood trickles down his white cheek. 

“You do have guts.”

“Who are you?” She demands. “An actor playing a pirate?”

But she knows his face. The eyeliner is neater and the nose less protuberant on the wanted posters, but there’s no mistaking it. She’s definitely seen him before. 

“What do you want? How did you get in?”

He gives her a wry smile. Auburn curls fall over a leather eyepatch. “All fair questions. But let’s start with the first. I want you to read my fortune.”

“You broke into our shop just to have your  _ fortune told _ . I don’t believe you.”

“Ah.” He blushes. He’s rather a handsome thief. Naomi puts the thought away. “Well, when you put it that way, yes, it does seem a touch absurd.” He sweeps a gesture to the back room. “This room is for reading fortunes, isn’t it?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Asra’s not here. And how do you know that?”

He ignores her question. “I’m sure you’re equally capable. I don’t have much time. Read my cards, and I’ll leave you in peace. You have my word.”

She opens her mouth to tell him that even though Asra has left his deck with her for safekeeping, tarot is magician business and witches tend to contact the Arcana in other ways, and also that he broke into her shop and it’s time for her to have a cup of chamomile tea and a book, thank you very much, no, but the cards are suddenly heavy in her pocket. She reaches a hand in to feel their shiny backs before she can stop herself. 

“I’ll read your fortune.”

“After you, then.” He lifts the velvet curtain. The lamp pools blue light on the table– Asra spent hours one afternoon getting everything just so. Tassels and drapes hang from jewel-colored lanterns. When the doctor drops into the reading chair his legs don’t fit under the table. He sprawls them out on either side. 

“What’s your name?” She shuffles and fans the cards. 

“My name?” He looks startled. 

“I need your name for the reading.”

“Oh. Ahem. I thought you knew. Yes. Of course. Call me Julian.” A rakish grin crawls up his face. She shouldn’t be surprised. From what little she knows of Doctor Devorak this is exactly in character. “And you are?” 

“Naomi.”

“Ah! Naomi! What a lovely name! A musical name! Naomi. Go on then, Naomi. No need to be shy.”

“Flattery will not change your reading.” Still, the cards leap into her hands and flutter and snap between her fingers as she shuffles them. She lays out the top three in front of him. He traces the golden rays with a finger. 

“Pick.”

Wordlessly he does. There’s a lump in her throat. When she sees the skull and mournful eyes the bottom of her stomach drops out. 

“Death.” She listens as hard as she can, not through the cards like Asra does, but through the dirt under the shop, through the roots of the lilies in the window boxes, through the stones. “The past is clouded, but the future–”

“Death,” he repeats. “Death?” Then, laughing so hard his shoulders shake, he slides off the bench and faces the starry curtain. “Death cast her gaze on this wretch and turned away. She has no interest in an abomination like me.” 

Without looking back he strides from the room, mouth twisted in disgust. She bolts after him. 

“Wait! That’s not what Death means! Death means metamorphosis, and it’s my–”

“No need to be hospitable. I’ll leave you be.” He picks up his mask from the floor and studies his reflection in its eyes. She can’t get the words out. “Be careful, Naomi. There are forces at work that threaten to pull Vesuvia under. Don’t drown.”

“Listen to me–”

“The hour is late. I’m out of time.”

With a swirl of his cape and a creak of the door hinges, he vanishes into the early morning fog. 

“Death is me,” she says, though he’s already gone.


	3. A Rope In Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> double update (double update)
> 
> it took a long time cause I had midterms
> 
> i promise this gets shippier later I just love me some plot

When she hears the door downstairs creak open she doesn’t bother going down to check who it is. She knows the soft bare echo of the footsteps, knows from the sure way the key turned in the lock. Asra is the only other person with a key to her shop. 

She wants to go downstairs, maybe just to make him uncomfortable, maybe to make him explain why he keeps leaving at every opportunity, but he climbs the stairs before she can rise from her desk. 

“Nomi.”

“You’re back.”

He takes his plumed traveling hat off and holds it to his chest. He’s out of breath. 

“I brought herbs back. Figured you’d need a restock.”

“I’m not doing much business now that I’m working in the dungeons.”

“Well. Maybe they can use the herbs.” When she looks at him, his violet eyes flick away; his hands twist at the fringe of his scarf. 

“Did you find anything?”

He shakes his head. “No. I went as south as the Steppe, wherever there was news of the plague, but cases there are scarce. I talked to a few magicians, but none of them had had any luck. I did readings at every river the towns were on but the water was always clean as far as I could tell. I don’t think… ah, never mind. I’m grasping at straws.”

“You were gone for six months.”

“I know. How have you been? How’s the city?”

“As it’s been. The number of the sick is still climbing, but we’re not overwhelmed yet. You should have been here.”

“Nomi, I–”

“You know as well as I do that the answers are in Vesuvia if they’re anywhere.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he admits. “And maybe not. I’m not sorry I went.”

She looks back at her tables. There are fewer numbers to keep track of now that she’s working mostly at the dungeon and only a bit in the shop, but business is painfully slow. She keeps a book at the counter now to keep herself from getting bored. It’s _The Winds of Zadit,_ a copy of an epic poem Asra had bought her. 

“You didn’t find anything at all?”

“Nothing we haven’t already hypothesized. No proof. No new treatments.” He pauses. “Are you still angry at me?”

She sighs and sets her jaw. “Yes. And I know I can’t change your mind. And that you’ll probably leave again. So I’m not going to do anything about it.”

He rubs at his eyes. “Hey, the night is still young.”

“It’s nine.”

“For those of us who don’t sleep like grandmas,” he says lightly, and she can heat his foxy smirk before she sees it. So they have a tentative peace; it’s enough, for now. She sets the pencil down. “Come with me to the palace. A few friends and I were going to have dinner and I’m sure they’d love to have your company. Peace offering?”

“Yes. Alright.” She scooches back her chair. “Promise we’ll be home by midnight?”

“I’ll try,” he laughs, “But I make no promises on their behalf.”

She steps into her sandals and picks up her staff from the wall. 

“Nomi, promise me when you’re an old lady you’ll go out for Golden Goose and dancing all night? Go for a vision quest or join a circus or something?”

“Being a morning person doesn’t make me boring. If you ask you might come along the next time I commune with the catacombs. You should meet a few of the gods buried under Vesuvia.”

“You never told me you were religious.”

“Do you believe in the Arcana?”

“No, it would be like believing in the mailman.”

“Exactly.” 

He laughs. “Well, come on. There’s a carriage outside, but I can send it away if you’d rather walk.”

They end up taking the carriage. Asra holds Faust on his lap, sitting in the bowl of his hat, and as they clatter toward the palace she lifts her head and slithers out the open window. Asra is never worried by her coming and going; they always know where the other is, and they always come back. 

Naomi doesn’t know what she’d been expecting. It was Asra, so maybe there would be an advisor or two, a librarian, the master of the cellar, a gardener. She wasn’t expecting to be sat on the veranda overlooking the labyrinth on a heap of silken cushions, wasn’t expecting anyone to ask whether she wanted Venterren white or Persephian black and whether she would like it chilled. 

“Countess.” Asra sweeps a bow more familiar than formal. “You look well.”

The Countess smiles into her goblet. Nomi, unsure of whether to bow or curtsy, accidentally steps on the back of her own sandal and almost falls down the stairs. Asra only looks amused. 

“Nadia, this is Naomi har Eema. She’s a witch from Udah. She keeps the Black Dove Apothecary in the Heart District. Naomi, this is the Countess.”

“Leilom sha achem,” says Nadia in better Udaish than Naomi is sure she herself can speak. She inclines her head. 

“It’s an honor to meet you, Your Excellency.”

“Please. Any friend of Asra’s is a friend of mine. There’s no need for formalities. Now, I believe our fourth guest is on his way.”

Someone bursts through the door out of breath and sweeps a bow, and it’s Doctor Devorak because of course, it’s Doctor Devorak. Nadia chuckles. Asra rolls his eyes. Julian lays a hand across his forehead in mock offense. 

“You wound me.” Then he notices her. “Naomi! I mean, hello! Surprise to see you here. But I suppose you’re the guest Asra said he was bringing. Figures you magic sorts would know each other.”

“Careful, Doctor Devorak. You are the only one here without any sort of gift.” She makes eye contact with Naomi, who gets the sense that the Countess is purposefully trying to make her feel included. Naomi hmms in agreement. Julian sprawls onto a cushion beside her, cracking his neck. She looks down, feeling shy but unwilling to let Asra regret bringing her. Nadia laughs at something Asra’s said, a glittering laugh, and the emeralds and pearls in her hair clink against each other. 

It’s strange to see Julian outside of the dungeons. He’s always busy, always with a quill jammed between his teeth. They’d had more than a few more run-ins since she started working six months ago: she’d backed him up in a spat with another doctor about which herb was best to treat worms in the stomach, saved a leech from Brundle’s hungry jaws, stayed overnight with a plague patient. It’s good work, needful work, but she knows she could do more if they let her. Even without magic, she’s a formidable herbalist. The number of full-fledged doctors in the dungeons is down to twenty-three (Julian’s serial number is still 069 because they haven’t changed every time a doctor died or fled Vesuvia) and Valdemar has begrudgingly permitted them to take on apprentices if they wish. The apprentices will be allowed to actually prescribe treatment and perform procedures after a while. Her only hope to use her training for anything but fetching water and laundering bloody aprons is to be picked as an apprentice. 

“Would you all like tea?” Nadia asks. “I have a pot of lapsang.” A servant produces four gold-trimmed cups. 

“Nothing more,” says Asra, reaching for a cup. 

“How were your travels, Asra?” Nadia extends her cup for a stream of smoke-black tea. 

“Better than being stuck in a palace with Lucio.”

Nadia rolls her eyes. “Thankfully I convinced him to go hunting this week. Not that he ever needs too much convincing, but the palace has been blissfully quiet. I swear if he dents another floor with those ridiculous shoes…” she sneers. “But I don’t mean to complain of something so trivial.”

“There are so many things worse about His Excellency,” Asra finishes. He catches the meaning of Nomi’s glance toward the servants, wondering if they’ll report to their master, but from their barely concealed laughter, they all agree with Nadia’s assessment. 

“Getting him to work with me on the canal plans is harder than chopping off his arm was. At least he wasn’t lucid enough to complain.” Julian smirks. “Maybe I could propose that we make all the new canals solid gold. It certainly worked with the arm.”

“You amputated the Count’s arm?”

“Ah, would you believe it? Eight years ago, back when I was still apprenticed to Nadia’s elder sibling. We were hired to travel with the Scourge mercenaries. That was before Lucio got a taste for conquering and stopped doing it for other people’s coin. It was in shrike country, the Battle of the Waysides. His first job for Count Spada. Seven brigades of Scourge warriors armed to the teeth with spears and swords against the farmers with their longbows and I believe a regiment of sheepdogs- and me fifteen with a bonesaw and of course a good gallon of those oils Dr. Satrinava distills from those nut trees; they got their start treating leprosy and some habits are hard to break. They don’t call it elephantitis idly, do they, Countess?” Nadia laughs at a joke Naomi doesn’t understand. “Anyway, where was I? Yes. Lucio was on the wrong end of a plow someone had put a spell on. He’ll claim it was a Zadithi mechanical ox the size of a house, but, well, I’m getting ahead of myself. After we got him cleaned up he mostly sat around giggling, off his mind on Lady Laudie, you understand, until this beetle landed on his face, a common black beetle, and he burst into tears. I think Doctor Satrinava felt bad for him, but as for me, well…” He grins. 

“The last time you told me that story, he was trampled by a band of carthorses the farmers unleashed,” Asra protests. 

“Oh, Clydesdales or plowshares, I rather enjoyed it,” says Nadia, looking pleased. “Oh, where are my manners? Naomi, forgive Julian, he’s incurable. And you haven’t been introduced.”

“We have. I work in the dungeons.”

Nadia’s perfect eyebrows arch in surprise. “In the dungeons! Well, as Countess of Vesuvia I must thank you for all you do.”

“I nearly killed her on her first day. And she was the one who patched me up.”

“It was a stepladder. I would have been fine.”

“It’s a good thing you work in a hospital, Ilya.” Asra’s eyes twinkle. “Keeps your victims close to aid.” 

“When did you come to Vesuvia?” Asks Nadia loudly to cover Julian and Asra’s bickering. 

“Three years ago when I was fifteen.”

“And how were you taught magic? An apprenticeship?”

“I’m a witch.”

“Ah. Self-made, I’ve been told, rather than taught? I myself have dreams of the future, though I never received training. My sister Navra told me once I might have become a sorceress, had I found a teacher and not been a princess. Do you know anything of dreams, then? Might you advise me about them?”

Naomi flushed. “Asra would know better than I do.” She fiddled with the rim of her wineglass. 

“Well, we are quite honored to have a witch in Vesuvia. Do you enjoy music? You would be welcome at my weekly music circles. Or perhaps you’d like to visit for tea?”

“Oh, I can’t play an instrument.”

“Do you sing, perhaps?” 

“I- I can carry a tune, that’s all, and I was never taught. I can dance, but only the Udanite way. And a few dances Asra’s taught me, but I can’t… I don’t know anything suitable for…” 

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to put you ill at ease. What do you enjoy, besides magic? And dancing?”  
“I don’t have time for much with the dungeons and the shop. I go to the docks to walk, sometimes.”

“We have a water garden. Perhaps you would enjoy that?”

“You are very kind,” says Naomi, whose stomach is beginning to hurt from having important people pay her a lot of attention. “I would like that.” She pauses. “Countess, forgive me, may I ask you a question?”

“Of course. Come, walk with me down into the garden a ways. We’ll leave Asra and Julian to their catfighting.” 

They rise from their cushions, silently trailed by a pair of guards. Nadia’s lilac gown sweeps over the marble steps. 

“Countess, I am not trained for Doctor Devorak’s style of medicine. I haven’t studied humors, and I’ve never done surgery except to stitch a woman up after she’s given birth. But I have magic. I can diagnose things that can’t be diagnosed otherwise. I can treat things with less pain and work. And Valdemar… Quaestor Valdemar took me aside after I fixed Doctor Devorak’s chin. I’m forbidden from using magic in the dungeons, but I can help. Would you, I mean, are you willing and able to override their order?”

“They’ve forbidden you from… why would Valdemar do this? Surely they understand what a help you could be.”

“Witch magic is mostly not magic at all. Witch magic is about… it’s about seeing and listening. Instead of looking and hearing. Do you know the Vesuvian fairy tale where the woman leads the son to his father’s grave even though she’s never met either of them before, never even been in that part of the world?”

“I do.” 

“She was a witch. The healing magic, the rocks moving when I tell them to- oh, forgive me, Countess, I’m worried I’m being too forward- those aren’t important. No one knows for sure where the plague comes from. And Valdemar loves the plague. And if someone who is good at figuring out what is going on finds where the plague comes from, they can cure it.”

“Do you need Valdemar’s permission to do those things?”

“Of course not. But the fact that I can is why they’re scared of the other things I can do.”

“The city is quite bereft of people like you. Doctor Devorak is one of them.”  
“Doctor Devorak?”

“Are you surprised? Don’t let the theatricality fool you. I thought you were supposed to notice things.”

 _I did,_ Nomi thinks, _but I hadn’t figured out how to assemble them yet._ “Will you help me?”

“Come for a walk in the water gardens with me on your next day off. And I will. I certainly won’t have underutilization of our resources in such a dire time.” Nadia turns her face back toward the lights of the palace. “I believe it’s getting late.”

They reach the top of the stairs just as Julian’s bootheel is disappearing around the corner of the veranda. Without thinking, Naomi chases after him, wooden soles clacking on the tiles. 

“Doctor Devorak!”

The lanterns are unlit in this part of the veranda. Julian turns. 

“Naomi! Forget to say goodbye?”

“Make me your apprentice.”

He starts. “Come again?”

“Make me your apprentice. Do you think I’m smart enough?”

“Oh, well, it’s not that, it’s just that I-?”

“Prefer to work alone? So do I. I won’t bother you. I want to help.”

“You want me to teach you medicine?” 

“Your kind of medicine, yes.”

“Plenty of the other doctors would be happy to take you.” He folds his arms.

“I’m not asking them. I’m asking you. You’re the smartest of all of them. None of them know more than one way of doing things.”

He snorts. “I’m not denying that. I just don’t think this is what you really want.”

“Do you want me to be your apprentice?”

“Do I want- what do you mean?”

“Do you want to teach me? Do you think I’d do well? Do you think I could help?”

Julian spins on his heel and turns away. He ruffles his hands through his hair, and when he turns back around, he’s holding out a black-gloved hand and wearing that old smirk. She feels as if she’s just asked to join a pirate crew, and doesn’t wholly mind. 

“Welcome aboard, Doctor har Eema.”

A smile creeps up Nomi’s face. _Maybe Mother was right, after all. Maybe I am going to save them._ “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Julian Devorak.”

-

“Here, do you know what this one does?”

“That’s where the voice is. Controls the breath.” 

“That’s the larynx. And right to the sides–”

“Those return the blood to the heart.”

“Lymph nodes.”

“And this–”

“I know I don’t know all the words, but I do know what a liver is.”

“Right, sorry. The tubes in the lungs are called bronchial tubes.”

“What’s the language for all of the names? Bronchia- and orchido-, where do they come from?”

Julian grins. “Zadithi. That’s where all the medical textbooks came from a few centuries back. Or that’s what Doctor Satrinava told me.”

“Satrinava?”

“One of Nadia’s siblings. I was apprenticed to them, back in the day. They’re your, um, your grand-doctor. Medical grandparent.”  
“Please don’t ever say that again.” 

“Noted.” 

“So down this side, it’s the stomach, spleen, and pancreas, the large and small intestines, the bladder and the pelvic floor. Can we move on to bones?”

He laughs, but acquiesces and rolls up the diagram, pulling another one off the shelf. This one is a human skeleton. Julian plucks a quill from an inkwell and doodles a pirate hat on it.

“Give me that.”

She takes the quill and adds an eyepatch. “Now she’s perfect.”

“How can you tell it’s a she?”

“Assuming she’s comfortable with being a she, her arms are short, her shoulders slope more, and her thorax is narrower.”

He claps his hands together. “Very good, Doctor har Eema! Tell me what you can already name.”

“That’s a skull. There’s the spine; I can tell you the names of the three parts in Udaish; the pelvic girdle. That’s a femur. There’s the sternum and the clavicle, the floating ribs, the mandible.”

“It’s so sad I’m not aboard a ship anymore. This would look wonderful hung up next to my hammock. Oh, pirate skeleton. If only you had come to me when I was young and unburdened.”

Naomi snorts, unable to help herself, and it devolves into a giggle. She straightens her slick black gloves and tries to will her face to be less pink. 

“I wouldn’t guess pirates are much for decorating.”

“And that’s where you would be wrong. I met a fellow once who wanted a set of shark ribs to inlay into his sea chest. Wouldn’t listen when I told him sharks don’t have bones. We pulled one up tangled in a net one day, and the poor man was distraught when he found out I was right.”

“Sharks don’t have bones?”

“Nope. Of course, they’re not  _ completely  _ without rigid tissues, like jellyfish. Mazelinka used to tell me sharks sold all their bones to the Devil for extra teeth.”

“Who’s Mazelinka?”

“The Dread Pirate Mazelinka is the greatest scourge to ever prowl the seas,” said Julian seriously. “Also the wife of one of the grandmas who raised me. Makes excellent soup. I once knew her to fight off a whole nest of baby krakens with a ladle.”

Nomi laughs. “Is that a story, or something you actually saw?”

Julian grins. “What’s the difference?” Then he pauses, and– “Bones! The human skeleton has 206 bones, around 300 when we’re born because a lot of them fuse together, these are the cervical vertebrae, of which there are seven, um, yes, thoracic vertebrae, twelve of those– are you getting all of this? Then five lumbar vertebrae. Ribs, obviously, twelve of those, one for each thoracic vertebrae, obviously, the shoulder girdle– that’s the scapula and the clavicle together, you already know those; the pelvic girdle is made of the ilium, the pubis, and the ischium, which is all sort of the same thing, of course, and the sacrum, which is the bottom vertebrae, and the coccyx, which is the tailbone. Then you have the sternum going down between the ribs, and that’s the torso. Good?”

“Take me through the parts of the hipbone again.”

Before he could speak, the door swung open, and a doctor in a white face mask stuck their head through.

“Devorak, you’re needed in the sickrooms for diagnostics.”

Julian straightened. “Yes. I’ll be right there. Naomi, if you’d like you can study, or if you have other work…?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Oh! You don’t– I mean, not that I doubt your ability, it’s just that–”

“I’m coming. Let’s go.”

Instead of fielding more argument, she scooched her chair back and shouldered past the bemused doctor standing in the doorway. Julian’s stumbling steps echoed behind her.

“Will Valdemar be upset that I’m with you?”  
“Valdemar? They’ll hardly notice.” Then, though he didn’t speak, she could hear him thinking. “Naomi, how well do you know the plague?”

“People come to me all the time when they don’t want to come to the palace dungeons.”  _ And I can feel it, too. I know it’s not like other sicknesses. The light is a different color. The water tastes wrong. The birds that eat the insects wind up dead.  _ “I can diagnose it.” 

“Here, take a mask,” he says, handing her one of his spares. When she pulls it on her nose wrinkles from the smell of stale chrysanthemums. 

“Perfect.” He straightens the beak for her. “Once more into the breach, then. Or into the breach at all, in your case.” Julian holds the door open for her. “Let’s away, Doctor har Eema.”

-

“That’s six more per day on average than last week,” says Nomi, turning over the charts. The charts are the hardest part of this job and would be even if she didn’t have to read Julian’s handwriting. She doesn’t need to count each head that comes through the door to know that cases are slowly rising. But he always seems so proud when she makes sense of the jagged lines and the scrawled margin notes that she keeps at it. It’s because she trusts his judgement, not because she likes the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. 

“Much as I try to talk to Valdemar about the importance of fieldwork,” Julian sighs. “They won’t listen.”

“I could try to talk to Asra. Maybe while he’s out traveling he could talk to some people from the south.”

“Ah, well. Asra’s in town. At the moment.”

“He is?” Normally she knew the moment Asra came within eyesight of Vesuvia, but it was hard to sense anything from the dungeons. 

“Yes, actually. And about that, erm…”

Julian blushes and itches at his collar. Just then a sigil appears in the stones, glowing white as the mandala traces six points, eight shifting lunar circles, and then becomes a door of light through which Asra steps and Faust slithers. Asra makes brusque work of the ties on his traveling cloak and gives his hair an artful fluff. Faust peers up at Nomi 

_ “Bad place!” _

“You’re right, Faust,” she agrees. 

“Oh. Nomi.” Asra flushes. “I should’ve expected you’d be here. Ah. Are you well?”

She nods. “And you had a good journey?”

“Yes, yes, ah, Naomi, there’s, well…”

_ “I stay with you,”  _ Faust informs her. 

“We have a prior engagement to get to,” Julian blurts out. “If you’ll excuse us.” 

Asra takes Julian’s hand and leads him through the portal. The last glimpse she gets of them is of Asra rolling his eyes and undoing the ties of Julian’s shirt. 

_ Oh.  _

“Faust, do you mind if Brundle is in the room with us?”

_ “Brundle?”  _ asks Faust, peering at the dog-shaped lump asleep on the bed. 

“Julian’s dog.”

_ “Good dog?”  _

“Very good dog.”

“ _ Squeeze?” _

“She’s sleeping, Faust.”

Faust sticks out her tongue. She peers pensively at Naomi, then curls up by her leg and hides her head in a purple coil. 

Asra and Julian. It’s all very strange. Asra always rolls his eyes when Julian goes off on one of his pirate stories; Julian trips over himself trying to please everyone. She thinks about the sheepish look in Julian’s eyes when he looked over his shoulder before the portal swallowed them. Much as she likes to be by herself she wishes he was here, gnawing on his quill, humming to himself as he brewed yet another pot of coffee, where she could tease him about Asra and also pretend she hadn’t seen what happened with Asra at all. Or let them do what they liked, what did it matter to her? 

_ More than you would like to admit,  _ said her thoughts, which she tried her best to ignore. 


	4. Marrying the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i realize that the word count of this is Way less than most fics but 1. I'm a novelist it's a habit if I wrote two hundred thousand words for every fully fleshed out plot my editor would strangle me and 2. as long as I'm happy I'm happy
> 
> I lied it's actually very shippy

His boots crunch in the sand. The waves break on smooth gray pebbles, leaving foam pooled between the rocks. Their two shadows stretch away from the dock lamps. 

Julian’s shoulders are hunched by his ears. There’s something he’s not telling her– knowing him, it’s nothing good. She traces the tip of her staff through the sand.

They stop at a rotting pier. Naomi waits for him to break the silence but he doesn’t, just looks up to where the galaxy swirls through the black of the night. She takes a few steps toward him, looking for a sign in his face. Finally, she hears him take a deep breath. His eyes turn toward the sea. 

“Feel that breeze. A nice night for sailing, don’t you think?” 

The wind ruffles through her curls. “Do you miss it?”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps staring out to where the ocean and the sky are the same shade of black. 

“Naomi, listen, we, uh. We really need to talk. We’ve, uh. Needed to talk all day. I guess I was enjoying myself too much to take the plunge.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Lots of things. Too many to count. Give me a number, and I’ll tell you it’s too low.” His brow furrows. “I’ve done the calculations. Thought of every possibility. Run through the scenario in my head over and over. There’s only one way I can see this whole thing playing out, and it’s not a happy ending; trust me.” He sighs. “Isn’t it best to cut things off at the beginning? To spare you the trouble of a tragic epilogue?”

He takes an unconscious step away from her and looks down the shoreline. That morning she woke up in the bed alone, the sun making squares on the quilts. The imprint of him beside her had long been cold. Mazelinka sipped her coffee at the kitchen table, looking knowing and tired. Even then, she hadn’t used a tracer spell, feeling in her gut that she would find him no matter what. 

“You weren’t going to get breakfast this morning, were you.”

“Erhm.” He clears his throat. “No. I wasn’t. I… may have panicked. A bit. I never would have just left you, though. Even if I wanted to,” he adds. “I don’t. Want to leave, that is. But I– I just don’t see how else this can go.”

He hops up onto the edge of the pier, feet dangling over the water. His heels make ripples in the surface. She sits silently next to him, almost covered by his cape. He leans toward her, their shoulders almost brushing, though he doesn’t allow himself to touch. 

He points a gloved hand toward a tiny island in the middle of the bay. 

“See that island? It’s called the Lazaret. Where the city sent the infected during the plague. And then where the dead were burned, when the island wasn’t big enough for the sick. A perfect monument to my failures, ah? Always visible from shore, always reminding the city how much they suffered. Every death, every body burnt in those pits, is another mark against me. And there are so many marks… I don’t want to drag this out, Nomi. This…” He gestures. “Whatever it was. Whatever it could have been.” Then he’s quiet. “It has to end. Before it’s too late for you. I’m only going to end up hurting you somehow. I know it.”

“I am not fragile.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.” He sneers. “I will absolutely hurt you. It’s only a matter of time. It’s what I do, you know. It’s what I’ve always done. I’ll be the first to admit my faults, and there are many. I lost myself. Or maybe this is the real me. Someone who hurts. A failure.” He brushes his toe through the water. “I don’t know if I killed the Count… but I know I could have. I know I have that darkness inside me. Isn’t that enough to damn me?” 

None of this, in true Julian fashion, has anything to do with the matter at hand. He’s dangerous– about as dangerous as a goose with a scalpel, which is not saying nothing, but she’s a witch, for crying out loud, she’s not defenseless– he’ll hurt her– which he’s been very careful this far not to do–he doesn’t know what he’s done– though he doesn’t know it, neither does she. Asra hasn’t told her anything much no matter how hard she presses. She’s from Udah. She’s twenty-three. She was a witch before too. For all she knows she sold curses for money and poisoned wells. He doesn’t deserve her– as if deserving matters. He won’t tell her how he feels. What he wants to do more than what he fears he might do. 

“Do you want this?”

He starts and almost falls into the water. “I-what?”

“Do you want this? Do you want me?”

He blushes and looks down. “That’s a strange question to ask when I’m breaking up with you, isn’t it? Not that it’s really a breakup. We never– we never had anything to start with. Just a night or two stolen from time.” He swallows. “What do I want? That’s a tough question to answer. I want you to be safe. I want you to stay out of this whole mess. I want to know…” He falters. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

“To me. It does.”

“Stubborn, aren’t you? It’s one of the things I like about you. No matter what happens… you keep pressing on. You’re a beacon. I can’t help myself. If I was a stronger man… if I wasn’t so weak.” He spits out the last word. “Why can’t I stay away from you?” 

Because you feel it too, she doesn’t say. That you are the answer to my question. 

“Ask me your questions when you’ve answered mine.”

Chastened, he barely looks at her when he admits, “I want you. I know it’s only been a short time but I can’t explain it. Maybe because you put me at ease? It’s a hard thing to do, you know. I want to be with you. That’s the problem, Naomi; I’m torn in two. I should leave, but my heart keeps pulling me back.” He gives her a wry smile. He looks up at the moon, which turns his face silver. “If I think about it I can see the path our story would take. So why…?” He turns away. “If I walk away, will I stay away? If I drop my guard, will I find myself coming back to you? That’s what makes me selfish. Because whatever we could have, whatever possibilities, they’ll only lead to ruin. That’s the kind of man I am. There’s no future for us that doesn’t end in pain for you.” 

“What future do you want ?” 

“I’ve told you. It doesn’t matter what I want.”

“And I’ve answered,” she counters, “It does. It matters to me.”

“Tragedy’s what I’m best at. It’s what happens. In this world, no one gets what they want. Why waste time imagining something you can’t ever have? I don’t dare hope. It just makes it hurt more when you don’t get it.”

“Would you try? For me?”

He laughs without meaning it. His lip curls. “What do you want to hear from me, Nomi? That I want…” His voice breaks when he speaks again. “That I want a future? That I– that I want to live?” 

“Julian.”

“I want something with you.” He stands up, running a hand through his hair. His pacing steps make the boards creak in time with the surging sea. She pulls her staff out of the stand and follows him, wanting to reach out to him but not knowing if she should. 

“I can see it when I close my eye. Laughter. Nights on the town. Never a dull moment. Days with friends. Pasha never having to cry again. Things we’ll never have. So it goes. But you’ll survive, Nomi. You were fine before I got here. You’ll be fine after I’ve left.” He shakes his head. 

“No one can tell the future. Not from so far away.”

Even before she says it she knows he won’t listen. He holds out a gloved hand. 

“I’ll walk you home.”

They walk back to the Heart District through the South Side. He doesn’t touch her or say anything. Once he whistles the first movement of a folk song she’s heard once or twice, then fizzes out and returns to silence. She racks her brain for something that will make him listen and comes up with nothing that isn’t her own vindictiveness, her own anger at being alone again.

“Julian–”

But his boots are already splashing in the puddles outside of her shop. The clock in the shop window shows three in the morning.

“Well… here we are. At your shop.” He studies his reflection in the murky water. “End of the line. When I came to Vesuvia, I was seeking answers. Finding you… that was better than I deserved.”

He reaches for her, then instead presses a kiss to the top of her head. His lips linger against her hair. She resists the urge to lean into the touch. 

“Julian, please will you–”

“There’s no use, dear. I– however brief it was, this mattered to me. I won’t forget.” 

He draws his cape around himself and strides down the road. The bricks shudder; water drips from the gutters. A vine curls away from a wall and reaches after him. Tiles slide off of roofs and shatter on the stones. Julian notices the pebbles shaking as he walks away and turns on his heel, looking back at her, eyes wide. A tiny crack snakes up the shop window. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I– I can’t always control it. I’m sorry. I’m trying.” 

“Good night, Naomi.” 

“Have a safe walk, Julian.”


	5. I Didn't Care Much How Long I Lived

“What if,” she starts, sharpening a piece of charcoal, “What if it’s not about the how? What if it’s about the what?”

Julian’s brows draw together. “I’m not sure I understand.” 

“All of our work is about how to cure the plague. It’s not about what the plague is.”

They’ve been working for almost seven hours already. Empty mugs scatter the room. Nomi’s hair is coming out of its braid; Julian’s eyeliner is smudged. Chalk diagrams of hearts and lungs covered in jagged handwriting line the walls, but they’re nowhere better off than when they started at the end of his rounds. 

“Say the plague is magical.” Julian opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off. “Just think about it. Valdemar hates when I talk about that possibility.”

“What makes you think Valdemar knows more about the plague than we do?”

“For starters, they’re not human.” 

“Not sure if I’d be worse off or better if I always trusted your instincts,” says Julian fondly. “Don’t suppose I have another explanation.” 

“I’ve tried to talk to Asra about this,” she continues, “Get him to talk to the Arcana about it. There’s something going on with them. Death, for example, the Tower, the Hierophant, Justice, and Temperance; they’re all quiet. He can hardly get through to them.” 

“They’re really, you know, people?”

“Of a sort.” Naomi grabs the bag of coffee beans and unscrews the grinder. 

“Huh. I always thought it was a sort of metaphor.”

“How much has Asra actually explained to you how magic works?” 

“Not at all. Here, I’ll work the grinder while you explain.” 

She hands it over; he grinds the crank. “Magic is the opposite of entropy. Magic increases order, even if just for a small part of a system. The difference is that entropy operates all of the time; magic only operates in specific cases.” 

“So you’re saying the red plague is different not only because it’s a different disease, but because it’s playing by different rules than we are.”

“Exactly.”

“So we’re not going to win unless we start playing by those rules?”  
“I don’t think so.” 

He sets the grinder down on a stack of patient files. “So all of, the bloodletting and sanitation measures, they were never going to do anything?” He stands and starts to pace, running a clawed hand through his hair. “Of course, we’ve seen a drop in cases of other diseases… why are you talking to me about this? Sure, I’m a doctor, but I don’t know the first thing about magic. According to Asra, I’m fairly hopeless at it. I can’t do anything to _help_. Isn’t that all we do, nowadays? Just ease suffering and never fix anything?” 

“Maybe you can’t do magic, but you can understand it. That’s what I need you for.” She pours the fragrant grounds into the strainer and sets it over the salamander, who trills happily and curls up under the grate in their little stove. Water splashes out of the kettle and sizzles on the bricks. “And it’s not nothing to ease suffering. People deserve to die well.”

“They deserve to live. An easy death doesn’t seem like any consolation.” He shakes his head. “But you were explaining magic.”

“If this illness is magical in nature, there’s a caster, and a reason why they cast it. It’s too much for any human magician; that means it’s something more.”

“So if you find the caster, you can break the curse?”

“Some curses outlive their makers.”

He stares into the middle distance, then grins. “You think it’s Valdemar.”

“It’s possible.”

He puts his hands up. “I’m not arguing with you. I don’t think it accounts for how the plague moved up from the South. Valdemar has been in Vesuvia as long as anyone can remember. What’s the use of having it do that?”

“Maybe they summoned a creature that moved north to Vesuvia. Or they meant to drive people ahead of it toward Vesuvia.”

“They do have a motive,” he concedes. 

“Here. I’ll show you the ley lines.”

She picks up a piece of chalk from his desk and kneels to the stone floor. There’s no need to consult a map; she’s long since memorized the lines, a circling map, sometimes following rivers, sometimes following the rift valleys at the bottom of the sea, or the ancient roads where pilgrims once walked, like the maps of veins in the body he taught her to remember. She feels him watching her as she draws and is taken by the desire to frame his hollow cheeks in her hands and close her eyes and listen to the sound of his breathing. A ley line splits the seafloor twelve leagues from Nevivon, beneath the water where ladle-wielding pirates sail, and at last, the one that goes through the Shrike pass, the same road the plague took north. 

“This is the one.” She points to it. The coffee has started to whistle. 

“That’s how you think the plague came north.”

“It’s possible. I’m not sure.” 

He pours coffee into two mugs, one black, one unglazed and smooth. He holds one out to her, eyes gentle, and they both pass a minute in comfortable silence, breathing in the rich, bitter steam. Naomi blows gently on the surface. 

“So,” he says, starting to bounce his leg, “How can this help the patients? I don’t see a way in all of this short of curing it, and seas, I still think we’re a long way off from that.” 

“Some curses can be eased off without breaking. I don’t know how to explain it; like lancing a boil without curing the illness.” She pauses. “I thought you didn’t see the use in giving patients easy deaths.” 

“I didn’t say I thought it was useless, just that I don’t think I’d call it a victory.” He sighs, rubs his temples, sips his coffee; he’s always running himself down as hard as he can. Getting him to be kind to himself feels as impossible as curing the plague. 

_ The river runs clear when I step into it,  _ Nomi thinks, but that’s not at all like an answer. She’s tried the literal route: once she literally stood in one of the red canals, knowing her chances of getting the plague from it were through the roof, but nothing happened.  _ It’s not time,  _ said something not herself, whispering in her ear through the sea wind that blew west down the streets of Vesuvia. It’s not time. Well, fuck  _ fate,  _ and  _ destiny,  _ and  _ waiting.  _ She’s a doctor, and she has work to do. 

“What did Doctor Satrinava always say that the best medicine was?”  
“Sleep, or if you want to be realistic, ask your grandma,” he quotes. 

“My grandmother was a water witch. The canal plan proposal you’re working on, what if you changed it a little?”

He cocks his head. “I don’t follow. Also, what’s a water witch?”

“A person who can find water.”  
“That’s a little silly, wouldn’t you say? It’s a matter of finding birds and looking for rusty rocks and such. Some pirates can tell where land is from the waves and the sky. You wouldn’t call them land witches, would you?”

Naomi smiles. “Just because it’s partially explicable doesn’t mean it’s not magic. Some of the Southern tribes consider bartenders to be magicians.” 

“Well, that I can see. But you were talking about the canals.”

“Vesuvia is right on a ley line intersection.” She points to the star she’s drawn on the floor. “But ley lines aren’t forever, they can be moved. They follow water, or fissures in the earth, or roads people take. So maybe, if you change it a bit to move the intersection of the southern road and the river…” She wipes the chalk off with the back of her glove and redraws it. “It’s not perfect. But it would, I think, decrease infection by pulling all that raw power away from the city center.”

Julian leans forward, elbows on his knees, and peers down at the floor. “Huh. Tell you what, I’ll see if it’ll take water away from critical parts of the city, and if it doesn’t, I’ll take it to Nadia. The Countess, I mean.” He blushes. “She doesn’t always like to fight with Lucio, but if this will do what you say it’ll do… it’s worth a try.”

Naomi’s eyes dance. “Are you saying you want to try magic?”

Julian fake scoffs. “Perish the thought! I’m a man of reason.” He yawns, then chugs his coffee down to the dregs. “Eight icy hells, what time is it?”

“We finished our rounds eight hours ago, so… three in the morning?”

“Ah, a reasonable hour.” He grins, then laughs at her sleepy sigh. “The things we do for Vesuvia, huh, Doctor har Eema?”

She absentmindedly wipes dust off of the toe of his boot. “I haven’t seen Asra in almost a month.”

Julian looked away, ears red. “Ah, yes, about that.”

“Hmmm?”

“I don’t… I don’t know if that’s working.” He scratched under his collar. “It was just physical, of course, in the beginning, but I thought it would be more, except he doesn’t…”

“I did not want to know that.”

“Sorry.” He looks as if he’d like the floor to swallow him up. “Sorry. Do you know, um, why he’s always at the Coliseum…?”

“I don’t. If you want to know, ask him. Julian…”

“Oh, don’t worry, Naomi. I’m right as rain.” 

“You should sleep.” 

“You know I won’t.”

“Do you think you’ll go back to being a pirate after the plague is cured? Back to traveling?” she asks abruptly. 

“Who knows? It’s the plague or me, after all. Maybe I’ll go east– I never have gone back to the old trading cities my parents used to frequent. You could come with me, if you wanted. Nazali and I used to travel.” 

“Julian,” she says, not knowing what else to say. Swallowing a lump in her throat, she leans her head against his knee. They’ve hugged briefly a few times, brushed shoulders, but never done anything like this. He stiffens, then relaxes. She feels a shaking hand give her braid the barest touch. 

“If you fall asleep there, you’ll wake up with a sore neck.”

“Mmm. I’m just closing my eyes for a moment. Then I’ll help you finish up.”

She drifts off and sleeps without dreaming. 


	6. There Wasn't A Wrong Or A Right He Could Choose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly i know this isn't High Art Fic but I'm having a grand old time
> 
> thank you guys so much for reading

She’ll never forget watching him hang. As much as she knows it, much as she can feel it in the bottom of her heart that he’s gone, her grip on Portia falters. She rushes to the foot of the gallows, elbowing the shouting crowd in the ribs, and tried to reach him, to touch the sole of his boot, and when Portia’s fingers almost reach, Naomi feels a leap of hope that he’ll turn his head in the noose and grin, and it’ll all have been a terrible joke. But Mazelinka, stiff-chinned and teary-eyed, snatches the back of Portia’s shirt and yanks her away. The rope keeps swinging. 

“Your hands are shaking,” she said to him in the palace corridor, clutching at his quivering fingers. 

“Me? My hands are as sure as the sunrise, Naomi.” But they weren’t, not then, not when they fisted and shook with the shudder that went through his body like a shockwave when the trapdoor fell open. She’s not easily fooled and never has been. Sometimes, she wishes she was.

_ Don’t go where I can’t follow,  _ she wanted to say, but knew the tears would break if she did, and she had to be strong. She had to be stronger than she’d ever been in her life, if this plan would work, and he wouldn’t have to go to the gallows after all. She had no gateway. She’d never been to any realm but this one. 

“Who’s to say it’ll even work? And even if it does… what if you, uh, what if someone gets hurt in it? Or worse? What then?”

“You’re risking your life either way.”

“That’s  _ different.  _ Now you’re risking  _ your  _ safety. For  _ me.  _ I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“What makes you the only one who gets to be spared the pain of watching the people you care about suffer, Julian Devorak?” She snapped, then felt the string of anger break at the bolt of hurt on his face. “Please. We can do this together. Me and you.” 

“You’re right. You’re right. Don’t feel bad.” Hand still trembling, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Let’s find Asra.”

-

They flop, gasping and spluttering, onto the black sand of the beach. Cradled in the knobbly knees of the mangroves, she wraps her arm around his back until he’s finished coughing. It’s a dreamworld: the world unfolding the closer they get, as if someone had just thought of it, the mangroves twisting in repetitive shapes, then bending in wind she can’t feel, like gossiping neighbours exchanging hushed stories of the rainstorm coming soon. The water tastes like silt and tin. The river carries no stones. 

They walk past a lightning bolt frozen in time, buzzing like a hive of wasps, tiny forks thick as fuzz sprouting from the white-hot blade. 

The water turns glass-clear. He’s off on a story again, and for the first time she remembers, she’s not listening, just nodding her head mindlessly and pushing vines aside with her staff. It makes sense that her staff would be with her in this realm. She’s had it since… since before she woke up in Asra’s arms, shaking, babbling in Udaish without knowing the meaning of the words. 

There’s a staircase, once painted gray, now rotted and chipping, and later on, the moment she’ll never wholly escape, there’s a staircase of wood so new it’s still green that the guardsmen lead him up. His foot meets nothing but air– his foot meets nothing but air– 

“He’s innocent, Nadia,” she says, after they fail to find the Hanged Man, after Julian is clapped back in irons, before he goes to the noose. “You can’t let him do this.”

“I know you… I know how much he means to you. But it appears this is the only way–”

“It’s not! We can go back. We can try again. You can’t order an innocent man to be hanged.”

Nadia touches a finger to her forehead, face heavy with remorse. “Will you hate me for this, Nomi? If it’s possible to stop him it’s beyond me. And if he can cure the plague…” she turns toward the daylight of the window, the whole city spread before her. “I am responsible for a hundred thousand souls. I believe Doctor Devorak and I were friends once. It pains me to ask this of him. If I could go to the gallows myself for this cure, I would. Please believe that I would, Naomi.”

He twists in the vines, eyebrow cocked gratuitously. That smirk, that little chip in his tooth, the open front of his shirt, she laughs, and wonders if they have the strength together to do this after all. The look in his eyes, the arch of his back, are asking for something she hasn’t given him yet. Perhaps he’s revisiting those dreams he told her on the dock: the nights on the town, the fists around necks of Golden Goose, the ocean blurring the horizon, her lips on his neck, his voice too undone to even beg. 

So she kisses him. She doesn’t tease or hold back, just kisses him until he sighs, until he relaxes in the silver vines and they recede into the mangrove trees, until the last kiss she gives him betrays her and he looks at her, bravado growing brittle, and holds her hand in his. 

“You don’t have to be so strong all of the time.”

“Yes I do. Until the plague is over.”

Then the fog arises, and the Hanged Man appears, watching, as the silt beneath their feet sucks at their shoes. When they’re knee-deep, clawing at the mangrove roots, she gives up and tugs on the silver line. The rope snaps taut– the rope snaps taut. 

In the town square, people have tied eye patches onto the statues of Lucio. They’re selling Nevivese soup pastries, fourpence each. A man slugs a tankard of salty bitters across his companion’s face. A knot of South Siders weep into dirty handkerchiefs. 

The witch, Naomi Sojourner, now possesses a gravitas almost equal to the Countess herself. People leap out of her way, clearing her path to Portia and Mazelinka at the foot of the gallows. Murmurs, disturbed like flies on stagnant water, follow where she goes. Naomi doesn’t smile, she just takes Mazelinka’s hand. 

The rope goes taut– his eyes go big, not looking at anyone, just the still shock of air. Portia lunges. The crowd roars. The hangman’s leg breaks at the knee as if struck with an iron and he cries out in sudden pain. Nadia rounds on Nomi. 

“Naomi!”

“Don’t give him to the guards,” she snarls. “Let us in the carriage with him.”

“It’s that way.” Nadia gestures. “Go.”

Mazelinka already has him in her arms. His head lolls against her shoulder, one foot missing its boot. Portia’s face is fierce and stained with tears. 

“Was– was that you, Nomi, who broke the hangman’s leg.”

“It was.” Her voice is ice.

“Mazelinka, he’s still, oh, it’s awful, come on, Ilya, did it… did not work?” She brushes a hand over his cheek. “Nomi, it’s okay, isn’t it, if it takes this long? He can still come back?”

“He will. He has to.” 

“Don’t you worry about our Ilya,” says Mazelinka, shifting her arm to support his head. “Wait– Naomi, his neck is healed.”

“What?” Portia tries to keep up with Mazelinka’s strides, feeling at Julian’s neck for a pulse. 

“That noose broke his neck. And look, it’s not broken any more. Well, I’ll be.” Mazelinka grins. “There’s my Ilyushka.” 

_ It might work.  _ “Portia, the second we’re in the carriage I’m going to try to find him.”

“You got it, Nomi.” 

A look from Mazelinka makes the guards fling the carriage doors open. Mazelinka lays him across one of the plush velvet seats; Portia snaps the curtains shut. 

“Bring him back, Nomi.” 

She nods. Naomi clutches his cooling hands, lays her ear over his heart, and walks between the worlds. 

-

When she finds him, he doesn’t see her. He stands on a spot of textured blackness, looking up at a thousand unfamiliar stars. 

“Ilya!” She cries. “Ilya!”

He probes the darkness. She catches the barest glimpse of recognition on his face, and then the air blurs to water, and she floats through silty dark. 

She’s back again, but this time he’s not coughing up water on the sand beside her. The mangrove roots look like hands. 

_ You’ll find your way, Naomi. You always do.  _ It’s his voice in her head. She follows it with abandon, charging through the Hanged Man’s realm, soaking the hem of her dress. 

Her ankle strikes a root and she sprawls, splashing, in the murky water. Her palms sting. She tries to stand up and keep running, but silver vines and black branches alike are twining around her, trapping her in a cage of mandrake roots. She snaps a branch, tears a vine, yanks her foot free, but no matter how hard she fights, the vines wind tighter. She wheezes for breath. 

Asra always said the Hanged Man and Death were not malevolent, they only seemed that way sometimes. So perhaps this too… she slackens in their grip. 

The vines are still for a moment. Then they release all but their hold on her ankles; like winged shoes they bear her forward through the red mist, leaves rustling, branches whispering, and set her on an island of black sand. 

A lamp-post, made of curling wrought iron and with a single light hanging from its beam, casts a pool of red light in which Julian kneels, face clutched in his hands. His shirt is torn. 

“Ilya!” She shouts, but this time he doesn’t hear her. 

The Hanged Man seems to unfold himself from a shadow. His wings spread nearly the breadth of the little island. 

“I see you’re here at last.” He turns his head so one beady is fixed on her, and winks. She draws in a little gasp of breath. “Your memories should be returning now.” 

Julian lifts himself unsteadily to his feet, arms outspread for balance. “What…” He rubs his forehead. “The  _ hell?  _ I… this is… no, it can’t… it can’t be. It’s impossible.” 

“To the contrary,” intones the Hanged Man. “It’s the truth.”

“I didn’t… even when… even when I thought, and then…”

“You remembered some of what happened that night, but you were still missing a piece. The answer to a vital question. Why? Why were you going to Lucio’s room?”

“To kill him.” Julian snarls. “And the only reason I didn’t, is… because I didn’t get there in time? Why? Why would I want to…?” But then his eye goes wide. 

“Ah. There it is.” 

Julian lifts his shaking hands to his face. He rips off his glove and stares at the murderer’s mark, black against his skin. “He… he was…? He was the source of the plague? All those years… all those people dead… it was because of  _ him?”  _

“Lucio was bound to the plague. Wherever he went, it followed. When he settled in Vesuvia, so did the plague.” 

“And killing him would have stopped it. That's what you told me, that night three years ago. That’s the cure.”

That’s when it starts coming back to her. 

The stale chrysanthemums. The diagrams of the canals, the chalk on her hands. The way the earth beneath the dungeons felt. The sting of her knees as she knelt, scrubbing the floor. Bitter coffee in her mouth when she woke up, head in the seat of Julian’s chair. 

“But if the plague’s coming back… so is Lucio. He’s… how would he do that?”

The Hanged Man shrugs, feathers ruffling. 

She had worked in the dungeon. It had been the last two weeks before the Masquerade when Vesuvia was at her lowest, when the dead piled up in the streets. They were desperate. Some had turned to dead gods and destructive magic trying to cure the plague. 

“You have a plan to come back to life, don’t you?”

“This…?” Julian touches the mark on his throat. “This mark is… it’s from you. I made a deal with you. I gave up the memories I didn’t want, for the power to heal.”

When she started coughing blood into her mask she didn’t care. When her muscles turned to aches and fever she kept working.

“You mean, Lucio made a deal to come back? He made a deal with you?”

“I’m not the only one capable of making deals. There are others. But who? That’s a question you’ll have to answer on your own. Now you know everything I can tell you. The rest is up to you.”

There was something she wanted to tell him. Something that felt selfish. And then, that last night before the Masquerade, Lucio, preening, screeching, desperate, and the key in his kid gloves, turning in the lock to Julian’s office. He was trapped inside. 

“So, uh, what now? Are you going to send me back so I can tell everyone the cure?”

“Not quite.”

“Going to judge me first, then? Decide whether I’m worthy?”

“It’s not about worthy, you stupid, lovely man,” she says aloud, knowing he can’t hear her. The Hanged Man caws with laughter. 

“Didn’t I just say the rest was up to you? Indecision, introspection, inaction, they can only serve you for so long. You stand between realms, at a crossroads. Only you can decide where to go now.” 

“Only… alright, what are my options?”

“Your mark has enough power left to return you to the living realm. Then it will disappear. Forever. Or you can stay here, in my realm. The cure will reach the people who need to know.”

“You mean, her?”

“Perhaps.” 

Julian cracks a joyless grin. “Between the devil and the deep blue sea once more, aren’t I? I won’t be able to heal people anymore.”

“You’re a doctor!” Nomi shouts. 

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you,” says the Hanged Man with barely concealed amusement. 

“Well, yes, but… but leeches can only do so much. Half the time they don’t do anything at all. This mark… it really is better than any medical treatment I know.”

“And without it?”

“I… I don’t know.” 

She remembers a coarse blanket, a samovar, something else, something else she’s supposed to tell him, something she has to say. 

“I couldn’t even find the plague cure on my own. I needed you to tell me. Killing Lucio? Anyone could’ve done that. Asra, Nadia. Both with a good deal of relish, too. Even once I knew the cure… I didn’t get there in time. I didn’t stop him. And now… what good is a plague doctor when there’s no more plague? What good am I?”

She throws herself bodily into the fog, but can’t make forward progress. “Ilya, Ilya, listen, let me talk to him. You have to tell him.”

The Hanged Man gives her a sidelong glance and just barely shakes his head.  _ Is he strong enough? Yes. Yes, I believe he is.  _ She lowers her outstretched hand. 

“So say I go back and deliver the cure.” Julian starts pacing, boots crunching in the sand. “Then… then, I… All this time I thought I was coming back to Vesuvia to pay for my crimes. I didn’t think ‘after’ was on the table.”

“The future is always changing. What will you do when you reach the precipice?”  
“What’ll I do? What I always do. Find trouble. Drag everyone down with me. Run away. Lose sleep. Find new trouble. Story of my life. And I’ll… I’ll hurt people again. I know I will. Pasha. Mazelinka. And…” His voice breaks. “And her. Again. If I stay… I know she wouldn’t want me to stay. Will I just find another thing to hang for? Another way to fail her?”

Her chest feels cold. It’s the end of the memory. Head tilted back to make breathing easier, she finally crawled to his office door, leaned against it, and waited there for him to come out. 

“When I met her… it was like I hadn’t met a real person before. It was like I was Nadia, and I’d dreamed the last three years of my life away until her. I knew her. I  _ knew  _ her. She was my apprentice. She… oh, gods, and when I asked you to take away the memory… the one of her against my office door. She was waiting for me. She didn’t know I’d gone. She was… I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything.”

And then the darkness came. She woke up, crying in Asra’s arms. 

“Send me back. Send me back now. I, ah…” When he smiles, it could crack the sky. “I have an appointment with Doctor har Eema.” 

“Ilya, I’m coming!” She cries, but the Hanged Man’s realm has faded into darkness. 

Naomi bolts upright in a lavish palace bed, Portia kneeling at its foot. 

“I’m so sorry, I wanted to let you sleep, but Ilya’s body, it’s gone! Someone took it!” Tears pool in her eyes. 

“Portia, he’s alive. He made it out. Come on, hurry, I know where he is!”

“Where?” Shouts Portia, dogging her heels as she rips off the covers and snatches her staff from the wall. 

“With our old boss.” Nomi cracks her knuckles. “We’ll need your keys.”


	7. Gone, I'm Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you THOUGHT THIS WAS GOING TO BE THE GRATUITOUS ONESHOT I ORIGINALLY POSTED? well you thought wrong
> 
> it's the Sad Chapter

When she arrives in the dungeon it’s packed. Apprentices carry stretchers, gaggles of coughing people huddle in triage, doctors buckle on their masks, a red beetle crunches under a boot, the bonesaw grinds in the background, the river gurgles under the ground. She keeps her head down and shoulders through the crowd toward the equipment racks, where she pulls on an apron stained with old blood and long gloves. Her mask has been over her mouth since she left the Flooded District; it’s too much to risk, even if the head doctors are theorizing that the plague isn’t spread by air. Julian maintains that it’s the water. She suspects it might be something else. The sense of death is the same everywhere except here, under the palace, where the sick congregate, so that’s hardly a lead. She shakes her head; there’s work to do. 

Naomi opens the beak of her mask and tips open the sachet she’d tied to her belt. Peppercorns and anise stars are luxuries reserved for the doctors and the palace since the city closed to non-essential trade, but rosehips and tea are things she can grow in her window box. She breaks the cinnamon sticks between the fingers of her gloves. There’s still enough in her bag for Doctor Devorak. 

“Ah! Curse that animals can’t catch this damned plague!”

She hears a familiar yip. Brundle, immune to the suffering in the hospital, trots toward her, wiggling her mangy tail. Her tongue lolls out of her mouth.

“Brundle. Little  _ bar-hakh,  _ where is your master?”

Brundle rumbles at her, but as usual she’ll only be clever for Julian. Nomi scratches her behind the ears. 

A few paces from them, a victim collapses in triage. Hands the color of blood, they scrabble at the stone floor, crying red tears. An apprentice puts his arms under their shoulders and lifts them up, hurrying down the hall that goes to hospice, or else to the morgue. The lead triage doctor rings a bell. 

“I need assistance in triage! We’re double-overloaded and half-staffed!” Then, to themself, “Where’s Valdemar? No, that one will need to go straight to hospice. Lot of good it’ll do. We’re out of poppy, out of clotting medicine _ –  _ surgery, surgery, sickbeds _ –” _

“Any for vivisection? The hospice doctor is not being cooperative,” says Quaestor Valdemar, appearing out of nowhere. Blood, still wet, dampens their apron. “How am I meant to understand _ –  _ I mean, to cure this plague without specimens? Ah, Apprentice 069-A.” They turn their scarlet eyes on Nomi. She stiffens. 

“Where is Doctor Devorak?” 

“Hmmm? Oh, Doctor 069. In the operation theaters. A rather nasty side-sickness complicated by the plague. He’s been in there for eleven hours already. I can’t imagine what might have gone wrong.” Valdemar sounds delighted. 

“I’ll go clean the sickbed halls,” says Nomi before Valdemar can force her to do something awful and needless when there are patients that need help. 

She grabs a mop from the wall and carries a bucket to the rusted pump. The handle groans against the iron. Maybe she’s seeing things, but the water seems to be tinged pink. It’s freezing cold over her hand. 

In the sick hall the stone floor is wet with wastewater and piss. She pulls her mask tighter against her nose. No matter how often they clean the stink never fades. They used to air the dungeon out every week and scrub it top-to-bottom with rosewater and vinegar, but now there’s hardly time to scrub a bedpan before the next patient. There aren’t enough spare hands, either: eleven doctors have gone to the Lazaret this week alone. 

She has half of the floor mostly dry when she hears a familiar voice from outside the operating theater. There’s a puddle of riverwater where the cement has cracked in the hallway from the theater to the sickbeds. She gets rags to soak it up and cocks an ear to hear him. 

“You need different clothes, Mister Doctor.” 

“Oh, these old rags? It’ll all come out in the wash. Occupational hazard, my dear. Besides, I’ve done worse things to good shirts. Would you like to hear a story?”

The child must nod, because he carries on. 

“Before I came to Vesuvia I was a doctor aboard a pirate vessel.”

“A pirate! Pirates are thieves!”

“You wound me. We occasionally commandeered the cargo of other vessels.”

“That sounds like stealing.” 

“Potato, potato. Anyway, the boatswain had a terrible inflammation sickness that caused his kneecaps to _ – _ you probably don’t want to hear about that, do you.”

“What did his kneecaps do?”

“Well, have you ever seen a Karnasson meatball?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen an Udanite batting hoof?”

Nomi smiles to herself. She hasn’t been home in five years, but she remembers every holy day when the boys would take the leg-bones of the slaughtered cows and chase a leather ball around, arguing about how many points they’d each gotten. 

“No.”

“Well, have you met Can’t-Be-Arsed Louis from Port Tremaire who runs the sausage cart in South Goldgrave? And have you ever seen one of his sausages?”

Nomi scrubs especially hard at the stones to distract herself from laughing. 

“Didn’t he get in trouble for selling seafood sausage with fishhooks still in them?”

“Yes, yes, but health and safety codes don’t apply after you cross the river to the South End. Anyway, I’d heard tell of a particular jellyfish native to the Emerald sea whose venom has wonderful anti-inflammatory properties, and we were near the Pearl Isles in the first place. Well, imagine my surprise when our nets one morning came up with one of them having just eaten all of our fish.”

The little girl giggles. Nomi takes a silent step toward the door. 

“I’d seen specimens in a few port markets, but as it turns out they’d been juveniles, and this one was, well, not exactly bigger than me, at least on the account of mass _ –  _ jellyfish are invertebrates _ –  _ but I had my saber belowdecks and its tentacles are quite venomous.”

“What did you do?”

“What did I do? Naturally, I grabbed a length of spare line, neatly strangled it, and hung its beak from our prow.” He paused. “That’s not true. I stole the deckhand’s peg leg and tried to use that. As it turns out jellyfish are resistant to bludgeoning.” 

Nomi puts down her mop and her brush and peeks around the doorframe. Julian is perched on a chair outside the operating theater with a small girl sitting next to him. Belatedly Nomi remembers yesterday a woman coming in with pain in her stomach, trailed by her young daughter. The patient must be this girl’s mother. Julian continues his story, quite oblivious. 

“The second mate went and got a jar of my good leeches and threw them _ – _ ”

He didn’t get to finish. A doctor in a surgical mask stuck their head out the door of the theater.

“She’s awake, Devorak.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll be right in.” 

Julian rose to his feet, but not before looking at her out of the corner of his eye and allowing himself a slow, sad smile. He follows the other doctor into the theater, and the door shuts behind him. 

Naomi darts out of the doorway and back into the corridor, pressing herself against the stone wall. Now is not the time to acknowledge this. She takes a step back toward the main room and feels a tug at the bottom of her stomach. Perhaps it’s the magic that sleeps in her, trying to tell her something, but when she breathes in and reaches out all she feels is the promise of death. There’s no use acknowledging it. No use hoping. That would be foolishness. 

_ God, I’m in love with him, aren’t I.  _

She’s been his apprentice a little over a year now. It’s, well, a lot, occasionally. It’s a menagerie of Scourge War veterans showing up to thank him for saving their lives, pirates, ‘privateers’, whatever that means, South Siders showing up at odd hours, Julian forgetting to eat and sleep, the plague getting steadily worse, other things she doesn’t want to think about. Nothing in Vesuvia is painless. He’s seven years her senior, for crying out loud, he’s the smartest and most foolish person she knows, he has no regard for his own safety, drinks more coffee than is safe even for a person of his size (she knows; she’s done the math), and when Asra broke up with him he locked himself in his office and wrote a two-hundred-page play. She read it. It was terrible. 

_ Either way,  _ she thinks,  _ it’s no use.  _ Ninety-one percent of the patients who catch the plague end up dead. Her mother dreamed that she would come home after the plague was cured, but she’s believed for months that that home is going to be in the stars. There’s no way she survives this. She has her moments when the tears are relentless, because no one at home will know what happened, because she came to the city and _ –  _ she’ll cry again if she thinks about it. So it’s no use. 

In another world she would scold herself terribly for loving him. He would not be safe or happy, and neither would she, and certainly not with him. But what is the point of changing what she feels if she has weeks to live anyway? 

The floor is finished. She has duties until six o’clock, technically, but with Julian with the patient and no apprentices permitted in the theater, there’s no one else to tell her what to do. She’ll only be gone to the Heart District for half an hour. They’re understaffed, but the rest of her life belongs to Vesuvia already. This is the last of it that is hers. She’ll have to be grateful for it. 

She tosses her apron in the hazard bin and makes her way against the current of the sick, toward the light.

～

“Ihtisham? Please, it’s Naomi har Eema.” She has her hands and feet bare so he can see that she’s not sick. Though the merchant is banging around in his shop, he hasn’t moved toward the door. “I don’t have the plague. I need your help.”

“Go away, witch.” 

“I asked you for no payment when I helped your wife. I will pay for what I buy now. Please let me in.”  
“You witches and your favors!” He shouts back. 

“I’ll pay whatever you ask. Come out and see, my eyes are still white.” 

A window slat in the door slides aside. Ihtisham looks her up and down. “So you don’t have symptoms yet. You might still be sick for all I know.” 

Nomi pulls her coinpurse off of her belt and gives it a jingle. “This is everything I have. It’s yours. I only need a few things.” 

“What do you need so badly?”

“Something to comfort someone,” she answers. Grumbling, he opens the door and holds out his hand to catch her coinpurse. When the gold slides into his palm, he straightens and flashes her a brilliant smile. 

“You’re a good woman, Naomi.”

“Do you have anything from Nevivon?”

He steps into a back corner where textiles from all over their corner of their world are piled in neat but dusty stacks: Prakran silks, Venterri embroidery, mats of Bulan goat hair. He hands her a red blanket cross-stitched with black and white flowers. She takes it in her arms. It’s scratchy and warm, just right. There are chains of bells, cake-pans, jars of tea, glass animals, and a set of wooden flutes on the nearby shelves, but none of them catch her eye. She turns to a funny-looking silver pot with a firebird etched into the side. 

“What is this?”

“Ah! This is a samovar. It’s a sort of teakettle from east of the Strait of Seals. I’ve had it a long time. No one can figure out how it works.”

“I’ll take it.” She thinks of Mazelinka telling her how she’d found Julian and his sister shipwrecked from beyond the Strait. Maybe he will remember samovars. “Do you have any of the tea I used to buy from you before the quarantine order?”

“Just a jar left.”  
“That’s all I want. 

He hands her the jar. She tucks it into her bag. “Thank you.”

“Well, if you survive this plague…”

She doesn’t answer him, just shoulders the blanket and walks out the door, back toward the palace.  _ That is the end of my life that belongs to me.  _

～

He’s still busy when she gets back. He’s busy for the next three hours, during which she’s on cleaning duty outside of the vivisection laboratory. It’s hell. There’s not really another word for it. She tries not to think too much about what she’s doing. The worst of it is that when she stops and goes to check his office nothing feels different. 

She folds the blanket long and lays it across the foot of his bed. She tidies up his papers as best she can and puts the samovar on top of his desk, next to the jar of tea. His room is the only place in the dungeon– in all of Vesuvia– where death isn’t all she can sense. It’s regret and despair, but also hope: despair for himself, but hope for the world. If she had more money she would buy him a ship and tell him to sail away and be free.  She wants him to have a future. She wants him to live. A cup of tea and a blanket seems like a mockery of all that he’s given up. 

The door bangs open. He charges into the room, drawings of hearts and kidneys flying everywhere, scribbling something on a piece of paper. The quill jammed behind his ear is dripping ink down his cheek. When he sees the samovar he almost falls over backward. Drawings spill out of his arms. The quill falls from behind his ear and spatters ink on the floor. 

“Naomi, this is…” He lifts a hand to trace the etching on the samovar. “Was this you?”

“Do you know how to make it work? The samovar?”

“Do I – of course, I– and the tea–” He unscrews the lid and sniffs. “It’s the smokey stuff that you bring me.”

“I don’t have a strainer.”

“Ah, the samovar should have its own… Nomi?”

She can feel him looking at her. She could tell him, but what good would it do? If anyone is going to find the cure it’s him. She would only add another distraction. She can’t even imagine getting the words out. 

“Thank you. I– I don’t deserve– why did you–”

“It’s not about deserve. I want you to have these things. It’s a gift.”

“Yes, but–”

“You’re a good doctor,” she says. “I have faith in you. If there’s a cure, you’ll find it.” She steps toward the door. “I’m going to go help the hospice patients.”

She leaves before he can say anything. As she walks away, under the red light of the dungeons, her vision blurs with tears. 

～

**The way is open. Finish it.**

“Lucio was wrong about what I wanted, you know!”

**He was wrong about many things. As are you. But you will know, soon.**

He slams the elevator door shut and yanks the lever. Far away, Vulgora’s shrieks echo through the castle. 

“Ah, Ilya, you’ve done it now, haven’t you.” He runs his hands through his hair. The elevator groans. The chains shudder and click. “What are you going to do now?” He’ll have to grab his bag and flee the city. There are still a few ships coming and going in the harbor. It’s not as if he’s never stowed away before. Or maybe he’s still dying. Maybe he was wrong all along. Lucio died by magic, which is not usually in Julian’s wheelhouse, but Lucio feeding him the beetle, him finding out Lucio caused the plague, and Julian arriving at dinner meaning to kill him had to line up. Asra used to say magic was about intent. What else could it have been? The elevator strikes the bottom of the shaft. He plows through the door and takes off down the staircase. He’s ecstatic. No one will ever catch the plague again. 

“Death to tyrants!” He shouts, mainly to himself. His voice reverberates down the hallway. The dungeons are mostly empty; it should just be one doctor and five apprentices caring for the patients that couldn’t be left. He wonders if they’ll recover. Shouldn’t they, now that he’s killed Lucio? 

**Do not close the door before you know where you will go next.**

“Oh, would you stop being so–”

**Lucio is dead. But the Devil does not die.**

She’s outside his office. She’s propped up against the door. There’s blood down her chin. Her eyes are unseeing and unmistakably red. 

“Nomi, Nomi.” He runs to her and takes her cold hand. “Oh, it nearly got you. But I’ve cured it. You’ll be better in a heartbeat. I’ll look after you, if you’ll let me. Nomi. I’m so sorry it took so long. You must have suffered so…”

But he’s seen too many dead from the plague to lie to himself long. 

**Finish the deal, Ilya son of Pavel.**

“No. No, she didn’t– she’s, no, no, Naomi, you’re alright. Come on. Lucio’s dead. It’s over.”

He puts his arm behind her shoulder and pulls her into her lap. She smells dead, he thinks, and the thought is so awful that he chokes out a cry. 

“You did this. You did this. This must be what you took for the deal. Well, I still have my half, don’t I? Bring her back, executioner. Bring her back. Do it!” 

**I have taken nothing from you yet. The Fool brought her here. Death has carried her on. This is not my doing.**

“No, no, Naomi, come on, come back, come back! Asra said you were the best witch he ever met, Nomi, he said, you can come back, come back, please, you said witches always know when they’re about to die, so you can’t be– Naomi, Naomi, please, please, I’ll do anything, I–”

He can hardly breathe to speak through the tears. He touched his forehead to hers. Her skin is icy cold and her limbs are starting to stiffen. His tears drip onto her face. He presses a hand over her heart, something he would never have permitted himself before, something she surely wouldn’t have let him do– her pulse is still. He’s shaking. Thousands of people are dead, he’s just murdered the Count, Vesuvia is in shambles, and he has never once wept over it, but she’s gone.  _ If it’s true _ , he thinks, to whoever might be listening, to the Hanged Man, if he’s still there,  _ bring her back, bring her back, I’ll give up anything, anything that won’t make Pasha cry, anything that won’t make Mazelinka angry, anything to bring her back.  _

**This is not my deal to make.**

“What’s the use of you, then?” He cries out. “What’s the use of you? If I’m alive and she’s not, what’s the use of a deal with a petty god? Why didn’t I die instead?”

Even with red eyes and a stiff cold face she is so beautiful. Her hair is silky against his ungloved band. She hadn’t been braiding it lately, without time for anything but the patients, and the waves are loose and black. 

“What would have happened to her, if she’d lived? Could her magic have saved her if I’d been faster? Could Asra have saved her? Did she regret coming here?”

The Hanged Man does not answer. Julian just holds her and cries. It was really almost over. Things had almost turned out right. For the rest of Vesuvia they would. He gasps and coughs, wracked with crying. There would be no more sick. No more dead. They would close this little dungeon. The poor countess would be free at last. But there would be no more witch of Udah. She’d dropped her staff by the door, unable to grasp it any longer. It must have been a few days at least. He hadn’t even noticed she was sick. They hadn’t spoken since she’d come with her gifts, since the night Lucio had locked him in his office. What had she done when he’d been locked up and infected? He wishes he hadn’t killed Lucio with magic. He wishes he’d killed him properly, no tricks, no weapons. He’d gladly hang for it. 

“Will you let me be dead instead of her? Is there any way you’ll bring her back?”

This time the silence is broken by Valdemar’s disappointed screeches and the clack of their boots in the laboratory. 

“Oh! It’s over! Not even a body left of him!” 

The thought of them finding her revolts him, so he picks her up, cradling her head, and rushes toward the exit. She’s nearly a foot shorter than him, so small in his arms, smaller still without her spirit and her surety and the light in her eyes. He grabs her staff before he goes. It’s hard to see it without her. It’s hard to see anything without her. He carries her out the patient’s entrance. They’ll go to the docks. Surely there are a few ferrymen willing to take one more doctor to the Lazaret.

～

There’s still linen in the storerooms of the Lazaret. They’d taken to burning years ago, but nobility were still buried according to custom. There was a copse of trees by the shore where the smell of the crematorium hadn’t reached, surrounded by willow and olive trees. The waves break against the sand. 

**Have you discovered what you want yet?**

He doesn’t answer. He wrapped her in linen and laid her in the bottom of the deepest hole he could dig with only his hands and a rusty spade. He doesn’t know how burials worked in Udah. He doesn’t know if there’s something essential he’s missing. 

A vine of starstrand hung down from a willow tree. The flowers were all poisonous, but what did it matter? The blue glow lit the clearing. He plucked a flower. 

“Can my bargain be for something selfish?”

**What else is a bargain for?**

“What would you ask in return?”

**Something precious to you. But I am not cruel. I am not a haggler.**

He puts it beside her head. He’s tempted to pull the grave clothes back, just to see her face one last time. Instead he plucks another flower and sets it by the last one. 

“What would you ask in return if I wanted the ability to heal anyone of anything?”

**That you suffer with them. Even for a moment. And… as you will give much and receive pain in return, I will take something that causes you pain and joy at once.**

“Her,” he says, understanding. 

**Your memories of the last year. Since you met her.**

He picks up a handful of loose earth. 

“I’m sorry, Naomi. I’m sorry, Pasha. I’m sorry, Mazelinka. I tried.”

He tosses the dirt into her grave. 


	8. But That's Not Tonight

Quaestor Valdemar peers down. The red light does make it more difficult to make certain things out, especially when, well, their occupation is a rather red one, but the drama of it all is really priceless. They’d just sharpened their best scalpel set, giggling all the while – no one except Quaestor Valdemar themself would ever believe them capable of giggling, but the anticipation was really killing them. It was all for the science of medicine, of course. They had certainly never imagined pushing him, still screaming, into the well of the flesh eating beetles…no, that was a distracting thought. The moment was too good to ignore. They lifted their scalpel over his stomach. 

There was a clatter of sandals, a cawing, a stick cracking against the floor. Ah, this was even better! Surely this rabble wouldn’t do anything, not with their precious doctor strapped down and held hostage. All they could do was watch. 

“Have you come for the show?” Valdemar spins and leers at the steward and the witch, out of breath and marching toward the dissection theater. The steward has a raven perched on her shoulder.

The next thing they have the presence of mind to process is the feeling of their nose breaking in two places. Their eyes fly open, and the witch stands over them, that wretched staff raised to strike again. Blood drips into their ear. 

“If you ever–” She drives the butt of her staff into their left eye, voice eerily calm. The pain reverberates in their skull like a struck bell. “Touch him again, if you ever  _ look at him–”  _ She grabs a jar of extra-strength leeches off of the shelf and throws it into their face. Glass and blood spatter the floor. “I will make you  _ beg me  _ to kill you.”

Behind her, Julian’s body shuddered. Forgetting Quaestor Valdemar, Nomi rushed up the steps, heart in her throat. 

“How interesting. It seems he’s failed to die,” Valdemar gurgled. 

They hadn’t strapped him down. He lurched off the table, hitting the stone with a thud. 

“You quack!” Portia shrieks. “Coward! Come back here!” 

Portia broke the leg of a chair off and charged at Valdemar with a battle screech that could have caused a warrior chief of the Scourgelands to piss himself. Screaming, talons extended, Malak dive-bombed their face. Valdemar, nose still dripping, fled the dungeon, squawking as Portia chased them out. 

“Nomi. Nomi,” Julian said as she reached for him. “It’s you, isn’t it? I’m not dead? It worked?”

He tried to stand, though he still lacked the strength. She pulled his arm over her shoulder to support as much of his height as she could. He pressed his forehead against her hair. 

“You’re alive _ – _ ”

“I am? Are you sure? Perhaps you should check.”

She huffs a laugh despite herself. She would say that it’s enough of a sign that he’s joking despite having been dead not more than ten minutes ago, but then again he’d probably be an equally insufferable ghost. 

“Ilya, we…”

All thoughts of the talk they need to have die as he puts a shaking hand to her back, tracing the seam of her vest, cupping her hair against the nape of her neck, then tracing down to where her belt rests atop her hip. 

“Ah, Nomi…”

Unable to hold himself upright, he tumbled back onto the table, taking her with him. Her knee lands between his thighs. He takes her face in his hands, kissing her once, hard and close-mouthed, grateful, then soft and with a finger tracing over the shell of her ear, then on her jaw next to her ear, then on the mole beneath her collarbone. Before she would have been reserved, welcoming his affection but declining his advances, but now, now, the breath leaving his lips is a holy gift. He groans, relieved and longing. 

“Please, dearest, just now, don’t say anything that makes me reconsider every decision I’ve made all day. Surely I must have done something right, to be here.” 

He draws her down to kiss her, open-mouthed, licking the tip of her tongue. Their chests are pressed together where his shirt is open and her dress is cut near to her navel. His skin is warm. She’s counting miracles. 

Before he can protest, she ducks her head and presses it against his sternum. The hair there tickles her cheek, and beneath is the swift but steady pace of his heart. She can’t help but kiss him there too. The loveliest waltz she’s ever heard. 

She surges up, wrapping her arms around him. His laughter is warm against her lips. She’s as dizzy as if she’s been dancing with a bottle of wine in her hand. 

“I’m sorry I worried you, Nomi.” He smiles softly, permitting himself a happiness she’s never seen before. 

“You’re happy.”

The smile doesn’t change. “Am I?” Reluctantly he pulls his arms away so she can stand up. She holds out a hand to help him up, then picks up her staff from where she’d dropped it on the floor. He’s regained his strength, yet suddenly she’s the one trembling. He’s happy. 

“Ilya, I _ – _ ”

“Come along; let’s go in here. I can’t stand the sight of this place anymore.”

Before she can finish he takes her hand and leads her to a locked door. After fiddling with something in his sleeve, the lock slides off, and they duck inside. The room is scrolls of paper askance on the floor, ink splashed across the desk, candle wax dripping down a set of bookshelves. The bed is still rumpled. There are still scrawls across the wall. 

“This was mine,” he says. “Listen, Nomi, there’s something I have to tell you. Something I remembered from before…”

“That you knew me, and I died?” 

He turns to her in shock. “What, how, how did…? You already knew?”

“Not until today.”

He gapes at her, mouth working around a sentence he can’t get out. 

“I was there. I called out, but you couldn’t hear. I reached out, but I couldn’t touch you. But I heard everything. I remember another week and a half back. Nothing of Udah. Nothing of my family. Nothing of coming to Vesuvia. But I remember that.” 

“Then, that, that means…huh. Are you…are you okay?”

She ponders her response for a moment. “I wanted the truth. And now I have it. And you and I are both alive.”

He looks away, leaning subconsciously nearer to her. 

“My first memory,” she says, “Of this life is of . I was buried with this.” She lifts her staff. “And these.” She touches her earrings. “Do you know anything about that?” 

He exhales. He looks over the desk, then presses a hidden button beneath it. A secret drawer slides open. He picks out a sheaf of folded parchment. His eyes are shining. 

“Before I left Vesuvia,” he answers, “I buried you. I hadn’t known you were dying. It was all I could do.”

He buried her. “Did you remember that, when we met?”

“I’d dreamed of you. Wrapped in linen and covered in starstrand. When I… when I made my deal with the Hanged Man, I wanted to give up only the memory of finding you…of finding you, after you caught the plague, after I came back from Lucio’s wing. Of burying you. But I knew that if I kept only the good memories I would return to Vesuvia, and would only meet with disappointment. Besides I didn’t think I deserved even the happiness of remembering you.” 

Naomi Sojourner does not let people see her tears. She hasn’t cried in front of anyone for three years, not even Asra, but keeps her tears in the dark, to herself, longing for something she can’t describe. Her vision blurs. She looks away. “Ilya,” she says. “Ilya.” 

“Oh, Nomi.” He lifts the cool of his palm to her cheek. His lovely hand. He presses the paper into her grasp. She doesn’t have to open it to know it’s in her own hand, can feel the echo of her own presence in the ink. 

“I found this when I was here last time. I didn’t know what to think when I recognized your handwriting. Rationally I assumed it was a citizen’s report, but I knew. Oh, dearest _ – Naomi,  _ I’m so sorry. You needed me. I failed you. I wasn’t there.”

She shakes her head vigorously. “No, no. I trust you. Let me trust you.”

“Okay, okay. I will.”

“ _ Promise.” _

“I promise.”

She turns her head to kiss his palm. “You didn’t fail me. I am here. We’re both alive.” 

“Nomi, Nomi, do you want to know what else I remember? You _ –  _ you first came to the palace dressed like a nomad. You had a sheep with you. Real bastard of a sheep, too. You said it was a gift for the countess. You said you wanted to help. That your mother had had a dream and told you to come to Vesuvia. Do you remember that?”

She shakes her head. 

“They brought you to the dungeons. The guard had just started quarantining parts of the city. You were terrible with the leeches. I thought you were hopeless. Decent midwife, though, when a pregnant victim came in.”

“I don’t remember.” She feels an involuntary smile quirk at her mouth. “I am a decent midwife.”

“You would sing to the patients. You would volunteer for the jobs no one else wanted and you never complained.” He draws her closer. “I complained of those awful carnations Valdemar would order for our masks and so you brought in tea spices for me every day.”

There’s a memory that tugs at her mind from two weeks before she’d fallen ill. It doesn’t shock her. It’s like he said; she’d known, if not with her waking mind. There’s a place in the puzzle of their story where it fits. 

“I remember that. Do you remember when I brought you this?” she asks, touching the miniature samovar that sits atop his desk, the only thing in the room that seems to have ever been dusted. 

He smiled, eyes far-off. “Of course.”

“The day before I gave it to you you’d spent twelve hours in surgery and came out to comfort the patient’s daughter with your pirate stories. That _ –  _ that _ –  _ I bought you a samovar and a blanket from Nevivon and a jar of tea because I knew that I, that I  _ loved _ you and I wanted you to feel at home, even, even for only a while longer.” 

She cannot look at him. When she speaks again her voice is dry. “That’s the first day that I remember.” 

The silence is filled with the sound of his boots sliding across the stone, of him pulling his gloves off. When he touches her bare shoulders his fingertips are soft. He skates them across her skin, from mole to mole, from the canvas of her vest to the edges of her gloves, as light as air. 

“Naomi.” He stammers. “Nomi. Surely I _ –  _ for that long? You’re certain? I mean, I mean, of course you’re certain _ –  _ you’re _ –  _ you’re always sure, Nomi, is it terribly selfish of me to ask you to say it again?”

“I love you, Ilya Devorak.” 

He tips her head and kisses her. When he pulls away his breath is on her mouth. 

“I love you. I _ –  _ I can’t imagine what I’ve done to _ –  _ you are _ –  _ you  _ loved  _ me and I _ – _ I might have _ – _ ” 

She lifts her head and fixes him with a stare that makes the words die in his mouth. 

“Love is a choice. If you trust me, trust what I choose.” 

She glances over her shoulder and gives the door a regretful look. “We need to go.”

“They won’t miss us for another few minutes. Not when we’ve already lost so much time.” 

“We won’t lose any more. And neither will anyone else,” she promises. “No one will have to bury the ones they love the way you buried me. No one will die alone without a cure. Come along, love. There’s work to be done.” 


	9. She's Gonna Save Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> have i mentioned this is a self-service fic enough yet
> 
> I promise I will finish this I just had exams and the holidays ripp

“Before you join the party,” says Asra, pulling his satchel around, “You’ll need masks. Unless you want comments about that eye of yours. It’s not contagious, is it?”

Nomi shoots Asra a fond, scolding look. He has the decency to look a little chastened. 

“The only thing contagious about me is my sense of humor.”

“Don’t know which one’s scarier,” Asra laughs. “Here. Muriel and I made these for the two of you.” 

He produces a pair of masks from his back, one white, one black. Hers is white leather, lined with silk, and only goes over her right eye. She smirks at the irony. A silver ribbon fastens it around her head. 

“Ah, an eyepatch,” says Julian when she puts it on and shows him. “You look lovely, dear. Very funny, magician.” 

His own mask is beaked, but the smoothness of the carving and flair of feathers betrays Asra and Muriel’s handiwork. 

“You’ll need costumes,” Asra continues. “You can check the stalls out front.”

“Be safe, Asra.”

“Will do. You two be careful, okay? And don’t forget to enjoy the party!” The last part seems to be directed especially at her, but with the growing smirk on Julian’s face, she really thinks she will. She gives Asra a tiny nod. With a sweep of his cape, he disappears down another hallway. 

“May I?” She asks, taking his mask. He obliges, ducking his head so she can reach. She ties the ribbon and hides it under his curls, twining another lock of hair over his right eye. 

“Perfect. Thank you, dear.”

“We’ll have to find you a mirror.”

“Darling, the look in your eyes is mirror enough.” She blushes. “Let’s take a look at these costume stalls, eh?”

～

“I want to find a costume on my own. I’ll come find you, alright?”

“Are you sure?” He smiles. “A week ago you would have been tailing me like a mother hen, certain I was about to be clapped in irons.”

“Wasn’t there something called ‘double jeopardy’ you were talking about the other day?”

“Ah, yes. I should have known I was creating a monster by teaching you legal jargon.”

Naomi smiles. “Anyway, I always know where you are.”

“Ah, magic?”

“I’d know your voice anywhere and you’re half a foot taller than everyone but Muriel.”

“Well, yes, then, there is that. Run along! Holler if you need me, love.” 

She grins and darts off through the costume racks. Most are too gaudy for her taste: this one has too much leg, this one dowdy, this one too many sequins. She thinks she spies something she likes, but when she pulls it out, it’s yet another Lucio costume. Her nose wrinkles. 

“Dearest!” Julian shouts from somewhere behind her. “I’ve found something!”

When she rounds the corner he’s holding out the most awful, orange and purple, green-laced, bloomer-and-corset, gold-chain-bedangled outfit she’s ever seen and wearing a shit-eating grin. She gapes. 

“That is horrible.”

“The look on your face!”

“Oh!” She says half to herself, spying something promising and lifting it off the rack the moment Julian selects a costume all in black wool and red silk. Where a skirt of black feathers flares around the base of his costume’s jacket, hers comes with a cape of white feathers layered over wooly down and a gown of rough silk. 

“Naomi,” he says, eyes wide. “You like it?”

“It could have been made for you.”

“Let’s try them on. Ahem, pardon me? Madam attendant? A fitting room, please?”

“They’re back that way.” She jabs her thumb behind herself to a row of thin pinstriped tents. 

“After you.” He bows and gestures to a pair of tents, but she walks over to a slightly bigger red one.

“Room enough in here for both of us,” Nomi says, a little breathless. She wants to see if she’s made him blush but isn’t sure she can manage looking him in the eye. 

“Oh, full of good ideas, aren’t you.” 

“Come out and tell me if you want to buy them when you’re done,” says the attendant. “And please try not to wrinkle them.”

When they step into the tent the hubbub of the crowd turns a note more quiet. Julian unfastens his mask, undoes the garters that keep his boots up, and then pinches off his gloves. She watches the slenderness of his wrists, how he delicately cracks his knuckles, the black of the murderer’s mark against his graceful palms. When he catches her staring her eyes dart away.

“I hope you enjoy the Masquerade. Seas, listen to that crowd! It’ll be a party to remember! One for the history books!”

She leans her staff against the fabric of the tent and steps out of her sandals, feeling the straw mat beneath her bare feet. Her hands hesitate at the buckle of her belt. She wonders if she ever went to a Masquerade before, with Asra maybe, or if she was too busy at work in the dungeons. 

“I can’t wait to see what you think of it all, Nomi.”

She turns her back to him and sheds her vest, then pushes her dress over her shoulders. This is the closest they’ve ever been like this, at least that she remembers. The hot summer air suddenly feels oddly cool. She thinks about him behind her, the sound of his boots hitting the floor, his sash being untied, and blushes even deeper.  _ This was your idea, and now here you are.  _ She wants to turn around and look at him but can’t quite do it. 

“One year there was a scale model of the palace made entirely of sweets. It was delicious, of course, the food always is.”

She steps into the airy silk of the dress. Not quite ankle length, it’s light as wind and almost translucent, cut nearly to her navel in the front. She straightens the two thick strips of fabric that serve as the bodice, then drapes the feathery cloak around her shoulders. There’s a spare length of silver ribbon, which she ties around the tip of her staff.

“Help me get my mask back on?” He asks. “And the bubble room! That’s a classic. If they ever tried to retire it there’d be revolt in the streets.” She fastens the ribbon behind his head. He pulls the velvet jacket off the hanger.

“Ilya, could you help me with my hair?”

“What do you need?”

“Here.” She pulls a few pins out of her braid, then grabs a handful of hair from the back of her scalp. “Could you tuck this over the bottom of my braid? Just this bit, leave a little out still.” 

His fingers are still ungloved and cool against her skin. She suppresses a shiver when he combs them through the section she’s picked out, careful when he twists and tucks it in. He swears under his breath. 

“You’re good at this.”

“Would you believe I grew my hair long when I was a ship’s doctor? And Pasha always needed help with all her hair. Though I never attempted anything like your, ahem, braid circle thing.” 

She smiles. His fingertips ghost through the soft hairs on her nape. He pushes the pins into place, then presses a gentle kiss to the back of her neck. She inhales, then lets out a slow sigh. His smile is still against the top of her spine. 

“I can’t wait to show you everything. You’ll like the statue gallery. And the dancers.”

He pulls on his jacket. She plucks a few stray hairs out of the velvet, smoothing the feathers, adjusting the seams.

“Mind if I fix the sleeves? They’re a bit short.”

“If you want to.”

She gathers a little intention and gives the ends of his sleeves a smart yank; with a slight whoosh, they lengthen to his wrists. She buttons his shirt cuffs, the little silver buttons, straightens his cravat, and kisses his chin, which makes him smile. When she steps away, he spins, the feathers of the tailcoat lifting with the motion, and sweeps a gallant bow. 

“What do you think? Dashing? Stylish? Handsome?”

“You look perfect,” she says, and means every word. 

He smiles, that sweet, honest smile for a moment, which turns to a rakish grin. Julian takes her hand and twirls her twice, making her skirts a white flower. 

“Who could this vision be?” He laughs. “You look lovely.”

“Thank you,” she answers, and doesn’t miss the way his eyes trail down her bare ribs when she lifts her arms. 

Julian sticks his head out the door of the tent. “Excuse me! We’ll take both of these. They’re absolutely perfect!”

Naomi reached for her coin purse, still hanging from her belt, but the attendant shouts back, “You’re Naomi, the witch, right? The Countess sent word. Your costumes are courtesy of the palace. And we’ll take care of your things.”

Julian offers his arm. “We’ll have to thank the Countess later, won’t we? Come, dear, let’s be off.” 

～

They’ve been through the statue garden, shared at least three different cocktails, one of which causes Julian to float six inches off the ground for five minutes, cheated at cards, admired an array of dancing paper flowers, and are on their way to the tiny sandwiches room, which Julian swears he knows the whereabouts of, when Asra materializes with the last person Naomi was expecting to see at the Masquerade, Death, the Devil, and her own mother included. 

It’s Muriel. And it’s Muriel without his chains, without his cloak, wearing a beautiful suit of gold-trimmed green and blue and a sheer cape. Someone has braided his hair. Judging by the strand of jasmine vine braided into it, that someone was Asra, whose hand Muriel is currently clutching very hard. 

“Muriel!” Julian blurts out. “Hello!”

Muriel gives Asra a long-suffering look. 

“It’s good to see you, Muriel. You look nice,” Nomi says. He blushes and looks at his feet. Asra gives his hand an encouraging squeeze. 

“Asra… Asra wanted me here. In case something bad happens.” 

“I hope you two are enjoying yourselves,” says Asra, who looks incandescently happy. “Muriel, would you like to go outside to the gardens? There’s a tea garden you would like.”

“ _ Pepi!”  _ says Faust, who slithers out from beneath Asra’s gown. 

“Y-yes. That sounds nice.”

Hand in hand, they walk toward the garden entrance, where the doors are thrown open and the smell of camellia and myrrh is blowing into the palace. 

“To think I’d ever see that man in anything but leather…”

“Asra looked so happy.”

“And tonight of all nights,” Julian says drily, then sobers. “I’m glad Asra is happy too.” 

At that moment Procurator Volta scurries past. Julian grabs Nomi’s hand and bolts after her.

“Why are we following Volta?”

“Where the tiny sandwiches are, Volta is sure to be soon enough. Come on!”

He’s right. They follow Volta to a lavish banqueting hall where a rainbow of food is spread across a circular table. Courgette and carrot stew, lemon tea and dragonfruit trifle, pumpkin bread and blueberry jam, a roast capon, and a mountain of silvery salmon are capped off by Volta shoveling orange cakes into her mouth.

“Death, but I’m hungry. You?”

“Famished. How long have we been here?”

She glances at the stars through a high window. “Three hours.”

“How do you do that?”

“Witch. Come on, let’s try the pumpkin bread.”

The baker has used his usual recipe, but this one is topped with cream cheese and dried cranberry, with swirls of cinnamon sugar, and Nomi is going to eat the whole loaf. She brandishes the bread knife with a villainous gleam in her eye. Julian is over on the red section, laying claim to an entire lobster. After browsing the mashed potatoes and the coffee selection, which is nothing short of extravagant, they carry their plates to a table for two by the musicians.

“Have a bit of lobster. And try this dip I found.”

“Here, this wine, it tastes like… a little honey? Seawater? Black pepper?”

“I got some date cakes. I know you like them.”

“Thank you. Have some mutton.” 

“Oh, this song! I love this song!”

It’s a haunting melody, all flute and harp. Others are joining their partners on the dance floor. 

He unbuttons his coat and loosens his cravat. “May I have this dance?”

Smiling, she takes his hand, and they glide together onto the floor. When she sees a few other couples start to dance she’s worried he’s going to start a courtly dance, but he moves into a Zadithi-two step, and she grins. He sweeps a step to the side, and she follows, skirts swinging, a blur of white and black feathers. 

“Why haven’t we danced together before?”

“We’ll have to more, in the future.”

“I really did make the right choice, didn’t I?”

When she flashes him a confused look, he slows down into a revolving one-step. “Back in the Hanged Man’s realm. Naomi, I… I hope you know how much you mean to me. How important you are. You and I both know that I’ve made mistakes. A lot of mistakes. But even knowing what I’ve done…”

He’s just turning her around him, their foreheads almost touching. “Ilya. Trust me?”

“To the end.”

“I love you. So much. So much. I’m grateful for the little I remember, now.” She shifts the hand on his shoulder to cradle his jaw. “I’m glad you’re mine.”

“I’m going to be better. Mark or no mark, I’ll find a way to help people. The way you’ve helped me.”

She feels the barest hint of tension before he spins her out. She ducks back under his arm, to where he props his knee and dips her. They’re touching from ankle to chest. 

“I can’t deny I was tempted to stay,” he says, voice a whisper. “But I want to see tomorrow. And the day after that.”

“I want you to have a future,” she says, repeating his own words on the docks back to him. “I want you to live.”

“Naomi,” he says, and the song ends. The band taps a count, and the next one is fiddle and foot-stomping, the kind of jig played in the Raven.

“Ah, it’s the hint of cowbell that makes a good song! What do you say we get on the table and dance?”

She tightens her grip on his hand, bites her lip, and nods. He beams.

“Ah, now we’re talking!”

Their steps are faster, sharper, not all on the toe, but a full-foot stomp. The tension between them snaps and sings. He leaps onto a chair, spins her, and lifts her onto the banquet table, which has been picked over enough that there’s clear space. She stomps and twirls while he jumps between a roast and a soup tureen, and then they’re off, whirling between cakes and bread baskets. She shifts her hand to his waist, twists her weight, and dips him low over her leg, nose brushing the beak of his mask. He follows her without question, knowing she has the strength to hold him. 

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you,” he says, eyeing the strain of her arms with a flush beneath his mask. Meeting her gaze with a sinful bite of his lip, he slides his booted ankle up the back of her leg, then uses the leverage to lift back to his feet, and they’re dancing back down the table. She can’t remember learning to dance. In all her memories, in the earliest ones when Asra was nursing her back to health and they danced to the street musicians marching past, she knew, and so she almost forgets what her feet are doing in the sound of the fiddle and the pace of her breath and the curve of his smile. 

Attendants burst into the room, carrying instruments for the guests. Julian’s eyes land on a vielle.

“Oh, do you mind if I-?”

She steps away. Gleefully he snatches up the instrument and bow and starts sawing along to the melody. She taps the wooden sole of her sandal against the table once, twice, then starts stomping and stamping her way around him, tapping her staff against the table on the off-beats, listening to his laughter as he watches her dance. All the guests are clapping along. 

_ “My party! Mine!”  _ Hisses a voice. She stops dancing and grips her staff. There, at the end of the table, is a familiar absence of something, like the burn in her eye after looking at a candle. 

_ “If I can’t have it…” _

The not-there something pierces the tablecloth and yanks. Julian’s feet fly out from under him, but she’s already stepped down to a chair and catches him under the arms. An attendant rescues the vielle before it smashes on the ground. Volta wails plaintively and dives to the floor for the ruined feast. The something spits a curse, then disappears. 

“Naomi! Did you see what did that?”

“Through the door! I saw a torch flicker!”

They sprint through the crowd after it, Nomi peddling her legs as hard as she can to keep up with Julian, through the gleaming halls, and out onto the jasmine-covered balcony, then through the arch of the maze and down twists and turns of moonlit boxwood, to a clearing where the sick-sweet energy almost bowls her over. The spires of the palace are barely visible over the hedges. The party seems far away. 

“It went through here, but I can’t sense a direction.” She looks around. “No disturbed birds, nothing.”

“That, ah, that was him, wasn’t it? Count Lucio?”

“Or it was, once.”

“We’ll find him. The night is young, and we have plenty of tricks up our sleeves, don’t we?”

She peers back the way they came. “I remember all the turns,” she says, “But something tells me retracing our steps won’t help.”

“I trust your instincts. Lead the way?” He offers his hand. 

Two intersections later they come to a tiered fountain in the shadow of a willow tree. The viola is a little louder here. They must be closer to the palace. Gazing up at the moon is a person in a handsome elephant mask. When she looks at Julian, he’s gaping at them. 

“Is that… D-Doctor Satrinava!”

Satrinava. One of Nadia’s family. Nomi allows herself to relax a hair. 

“Who– could it be– Ilya, is that you?”

“None other!” Julian laughs. He sweeps them into a hug. When their eyes meet, Naomi gives Dr. Satrinava an acknowledging nod. 

“I can’t believe you recognized me with this thing on!” The doctor pulls their mask off. Red hair means the second Satrinava, Nomi thinks. “I have to say, you’re very healthy for a dead man, aren’t you?”

“You, uh, don’t seem surprised.”

“Dia filled me in. I hope you’ve fulfilled your risk-taking quota for the year?”

“I have, I promise.”

Nomi considers saying something but decides against it. 

“Oh, where are my manners? Let me introduce you. Ahem. Doctor Satrinava, this is Naomi Sojourner, my, er, my…”

“Yours, yes, I understand. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You as well.”

“You can call me Nazali. And so can you, Ilya.”

“I could never! You taught me everything I know about treating the plague.”

“I don’t recall teaching you the art of resurrection.”

“It’s been a few years,” Julian chuckles. “I’ve picked up some new tricks.”

“You’ve grown since you were seventeen. Not half as gangly as you used to be.” Nomi smiles. “The stories I could tell you, Naomi. The plague might be over, but Ilya’s antics are eternal.”

“I’m all ea–“

“The plague? Over? I wouldn’t count on that.”

Julian tenses and tries to step in front of her, but she blocks him with her staff, jaw set. Valdemar stalks over, wearing a gleaming skull mask. 

“Come back for more already, have you?” Nomi snarls. 

Valdemar flinches, but continues. “Doctor 069. Had I found you anywhere else, in any other company–”

Naomi flicks the point of her staff toward the bottom of their mask, preventing them from coming further. 

“Are you under the impression that I make idle threats? No closer, or I’ll make good.”

“Naomi, really–” Julian starts. 

“I don’t have to wait much longer. I can be patient for a little while,” Valdemar spits. 

“What are you talking about?” Asks Julian. 

“I’m merely looking forward to the return. It won’t be long now. Perhaps the next plague will set a new mortality record. I certainly hope it does. I wonder how long you’ll survive this time?”

The top six inches of earth under Valdemar’s feet split apart, causing them to fall on their ass, one ridiculous boot caught in the gap. They tug to free it to no avail

“That’s enough,” Nazali warns. “Take your ill omens elsewhere.”

“Doctor Satrinava, don’t–”

“Satrinava?” Valdemar says, prying their foot out of the ground and dusting themself off. Overhead the willow branches groan and twist. “How fortuitous, yes, perhaps we can–”

“Don’t listen, Nazali.”

“I led research during the Red Plague–”

“You only ever wanted to make it worse.” Valdemar’s curious gaze flicks to her. “Yes, I remember now more than I used to. Nazali, nothing you tell them will be used well. I promise you.”

“And Ilya?”

Julian sneers. “Valdemar never cared about a patient in their life.”

Nazali turns to Valdemar. “I’ll consider it. Go before this witch tears the palace apart.”

Valdemar glides back into the shadows of the maze. Nomi rounds on Nazali. 

“Valdemar tried to cut Julian open after he came back to life. They stole him. I–”

“Peace, Naomi. If anything, you could use Valdemar being distracted, for whatever the two of you are up to. Yes, yes, I know it’s something. I have to say I’m a bit worried. Should I be?”

“Us? Don’t worry about us.”

“I’ll try not to. And Naomi, was I right about the witch thing? I have to say I’ve met a geologist or two who probably could have managed that.”

“You’re right. Thank you, Doctor Satrinava.”

“Take care, Ilya, Naomi.”

They put their mask on, then follow Valdemar into the maze.

“Don’t worry about Doctor Satrinava,” Julian says, almost reading her mind. “They survived the Scourge Wars. They can take care of themself.”

And then the energy is back. This time it’s oily, black, bone-dead like starved soil, empty. She bolts through the maze, Julian beside her, branches whipping her face. It’s not like Valdemar’s energy, that still solid sameness, nor like Lucio’s energy, sickeningly rich and heavy. But when she screeches to a halt, the thing waiting is Lucio’s wavering ghost. 

“Doctor Jules,” he sneers. “Here to welcome me to the party?”

“Don’t you know what will happen if you come back?” Julian sighs. “The plague comes back with you.”

“Ugh! Not this again. It’s always plague this, stupid leeches, bile that. You’re at a party and you’re still hung up on it? It’s a wonder those pirates didn’t make you walk the plank.” His horned head swivels to look at her. Where is that energy coming from? Lucio himself feels like a dead zone, but that presence is everywhere. “I’ve got friends in high places now. Even got a patron. And he wants to extend a special offer to you.”

“The Devil,” she says, everything falling into place. 

“Ooh, smarty pants. Yes, he can keep the plague from coming back. Forever. Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“Ever heard the phrase ‘deal with the devil’ before? Honestly seems a bit too on the nose.” Julian says flatly. 

“Don’t be so suspicious, Jules! You weren’t this much of a stick in the mud before. What wouldn’t you do to cure the plague? What didn’t you do?”

Julian’s eyes fall on her for a moment, and she knows he’s remembering finding her propped against his office door. She squeezes his hand. 

“Just think about it. My patron’s coming by later. He’ll tell you the terms. Not that it matters. I have more friends than you think,  _ witch _ , and I’m coming for what’s mine whether you like it or not.”

He fades into not-there something and then into real nothingness, and the energy is gone. Julian puts a hand on her back. “Let’s go. Come on. Something tells me we can leave now.”

Wordlessly she nods. Arms wrapped around each other they walk toward the palace towers, and the entrance seems to find them. 

“The Devil will ask something in return. Like the Hanged Man asked for my memories of you.”

“I know.”

“And it’ll be a steep price. We take it or Lucio comes back.”

“And the plague with him. Right into the Masquerade.”

Everyone, Nadia, Asra, Portia, Muriel, they’re all here, everyone she remembers, everyone she loves. For a moment she pictures Asra with red eyes and sunken cheeks. 

“I can’t lose you again,” he says softly. “I’m not…”

“I’m not going to leave you.” She squeezes his waist. “We deserve to die well, a long time from now, not on a gallows or alone in a dungeon. I–” the memory of him jerking in the noose while Mazelinka held her and Portia back plays before her eyes. “In our old age. Happy.”

“You believe that?”

“Without a doubt.”

Julian straightens. “No goat is going to bring that sickness back to Vesuvia on my watch!”

“Just so,” she answers, feeling a burst of fondness for him. “Let’s find Nadia. She’ll have help.”

They find the Countess sitting with Portia, who is wearing a lovely scarlet gown decorated in ivory ribbons. She squeals when she sees Julian. 

“Boy! Every time I see you I’m just as glad you’re alive. Hello, Nomi!” She pinches the beak of his mask. “Couldn’t come see me before you ran off again, huh?”

“You look lovely, Portia. Did Pepi model for the mask?”

“She sure did!” Portia beams. 

“We have news,” says Nomi, and Nadia catches her meaning. She rises from her seat. 

“I’ve certainly heard stories about you two from all over the party. Before we discuss business, may I introduce my sister, Crown Princess Nafizah Satrinava of Prakra?”

Nafizah, a statuesque woman with pink hair, has a tiny turtle on her head that Nomi would have been obsessed with under happier circumstances. 

“And the Prakran ambassador, Natiqa Satrinava, said Portia, indicating a woman in a golden lion mask with blue hair. This must be number six. 

“You must be Naomi, the witch! I’ve heard so much about you.” Natiqa winks a blue-mascara’d eye. Nomi inclines her head. Natiqa turns to Julian. “Red hair, dark mask, conveniently gloved hands. I’ve only heard of one man like that. Could it be that a murderer walks free in the palace?”

“W-why, Princess Natiqa, surely you don’t believe that. That would require a conspiracy at the highest levels of Vesuvian government.”

“Just what are you implying?” Natiqa’s eyes twinkle. 

“Countess, we really must speak with you. Privately.”

After Nadia sends the guests away, Nomi and Julian explain what happened in the labyrinth. The Countess massages her temples while Portia puts a steadying hand on her back. 

“I have every confidence in you, Naomi.” She sighs. ‘You and Julian have had quite a night. It might seem strange, but perhaps you would like a short while to relax? You could use the palace baths.”

Naomi’s braid is half out, her feet covered in dust, and Julian has the icing from most of a fruitcake on his left boot. Nadia’s right, the next move seems to be on the part of the enemy, and it won’t hurt to replenish their strength. 

“I don’t see why not. Ilya, would you like that?”

“Yes! I mean, we, uh, thank you, Countess.”

“Portia, if you would?”

They’re escorted to a carved marble arch and a heavy door, which Portia unlocks. 

“Have a nice time,” she says, with a gratuitous wink to Nomi, who, although her calm demeanor doesn’t flinch, is sure that she would be beet red were she as pale as Julian. 

“Pasha!” Julian squawks. Portia just cackles and pulls the door open with surprising strength. 

The bath is the largest bath she’s ever seen, steam misting in the warm evening. Red peony petals float on the water, next to which an open bottle of white wine and two glasses sit on a cutting board. The curved marble columns are twisted with flowering vines. 

“Ilya,” she says, taking in the baskets of flowers and jars of scented oil. “Do you know why Nadia has so many baths?”

“To help swashbuckling witches and doctors defeat her Devil-cavorting ex-husband?” Julian loosens his collar in the steaming air. With clever fingers he undoes the buttons of his jacket. “Help me with my mask?”

She undoes the tie. He sets it down on a stool, then unties his cravat and unbuttons his shirt. Shyly she slips her hand into his. 

“If you’d told me before that I could be here with you…” He unclips the clasps holding her cloak to her dress. 

“I’m glad you are, after all, even now.”

Julian smiles. “Off you go, dear.” He nudges her toward a dividing screen and a rack of silk and gauze robes. She sheds her clothes and selects a robe of red silk. Julian’s selected one in black with bronze trim and is half-down the stairs.

“This is the life, isn’t it? Can’t get luxury like this on a pirate ship or on the South Side.” He skims his hand over the turquoise surface of the water and makes his way to a copper tray of glass jars. Nomi steps into the bath. 

“Nevivon bath salts!” Julian declares. “I’d know that tang anywhere! Ah, what a smell.”

He shakes the entire contents of the bottle into the water, then rifles through the rest of the bottles, occasionally adding a pinch of this or that. The room starts to smell like salt and tea; the smoke takes a bluish tinge. He bellows out a pleased sigh, then sinks down up to his shoulders,the tips of his hair dark with water. 

“Come on over, darling, the water’s perfect.” 

She drifts across the bath, sleeves floating on the surface, and slips in under his arm. Absentmindedly he rubs his thumb against her shoulder, and she tucks her head into the hollow of his neck. 

“You did a wonderful job.”

“Thank you. Seas, I can’t remember the last time I had a bath like this…”

He draws his fingertips closer to her collarbone, a questioning look in his eyes that she doesn’t see until he says her name.

“Nomi… it’s been even longer since I had one with such good company.”

“Ilya, I… I don’t, I mean, do you, are you asking…”

He grins and traces his middle finger up the side of her neck. “I know we’ve had an interesting evening, and likely to get more interesting. I want you to relax, even just for a little while.”

“Speak plainly.”

“I want you to be comfortable. Is the water okay? Do you need anything?”

She trails a wet hand through the lock of hair in front of his eye. 

“Does it bother you?” He swallows. “My eye?”

“I like seeing both your eyes,” she tells him. “I understand why you wear the patch, but when we’re alone…”

“Most would call it a bad omen.”

“Most would call Death a bad omen,” she counters. “But you and I know different. Let me wash your hair?”

His blush goes from his ears to the triangle of skin bared by his robe. 

“Oh, Naomi, you don’t have to–”

She combs her fingers through his curls, smoothing the wet strands together until his protests die down. 

“I like taking care of you.” She kisses his cheek. “Let me?”

His eyes darken. “I… I… alright…”

She kisses his lips. His hands flutter near her arms and then encircle her, pressing her against his warmth. A water droplet slides from her hair down her face. She cups his cheeks, glides her palms along the planes of his chest. He tilts his head and lets her lick into his mouth.

“I-I like your idea of taking care of me–”

She nips his lower lip. Their chests are pressed together, separated by damp silk– she fists her hand in his curls and bares his white throat, licking the steam off the tendon running from his collarbone to his jaw. 

“I love you,” she purrs. “My Ilya.”

“Nomi,” he whines. “Please…”

“Please what?”

“Bite me, please, Nomi–”

She sinks her teeth into the crook of his neck and shoulder, sucking enough to bruise, revelling in the whimpers he tries to muffle. She soothes the mark with her tongue and noses upward toward his jaw, sucking at his pulse and feeling the hum of his whine. When she pulls away he has four purpling marks starring his neck that she presses her fingers to half in awe, awe that he would let her, awe that it’s him here with her. 

“You’ll have to keep your cravat done when we go back to the party,” she tells him breathlessly. 

“Naomi, you– I–” He lifts his hand to touch his neck. “You don’t have to… stop, if you don’t…”

“We shouldn’t get too caught up,” she murmurs, kissing the base of his jaw. “Is it alright if I wash your hair?”

He flushes and nods. She hops up on the tile behind him, robe clinging to her legs, and reaches for a jar of soap. It smells like sandalwood and cinnamon. She sits behind his head, feet dangling in the water. Julian dunks his head to wet his hair and shakes the droplets out of his eyes. She pours spicy lather into his hair and scrubs at his scalp with careful fingers. She wipes suds off his forehead.

“You have nice hair.” She pushes it back from his eyes. “Rinse whenever you like.”

He dunks his head again, swishing his hair about in the water, and comes up with it in a curtain over his face. When she parts it with her fingers, Julian snorts. 

“You’ve been working so hard, Ilya.” She kneads the muscles at the base of his neck. 

“Never feels like enough.” 

She tucks a peony behind his ear, then kisses the top of his head. “It is. It’s enough. You’re enough.”

He twists his head to kiss her, soft and lingering. He tastes of salt and coffee, and when they part they rest their foreheads together for a long moment. His breath tickles her mouth. 

“We should go,” he says at last. “More to do. Lucio and the rest.”

“What was that you said once? Between the Devil and the deep blue sea.” 

“Long as you’re with me, dearest, nowhere I’d rather be.”


End file.
